:NGLiSH  ESSAYISTS 


WILLIAM  .HAWLEY  DAVIS 


iTUDIE; 


ERATURE 


I 


4 


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English  Essayists 

A  Reader  s  Handbook 


By 

WILLIAM  HAWLEY  DAVIS,  A.M. 

of  Bowdoin  College 


BOSTON:  RICHARD  G.  BADGER 
THE      GORHAM      PRESS 

TORONTO:  THE  COPP  CLARK  CO.,  LIMITED 


Copyright,  1916,  by  Richard  G.  Badger    ^  v  ^ 

—  a\     ^ 

All  Rights  Reserved  ,\J} 


The  Gorham  Press,  Bostoii,  U.  S.  A. 


Made  in  the  United  States  of  America 


PREFACE 

^T^HIS  is  a  handbook  for  readers  of  English  es- 
-*-  says.  The  compiler  knows  of  few  things  more 
subject  to  abuse  than  books  about  books.  If  used 
independently,  or  deliberately  read  from  cover  to  cover 
and  dismissed  with  that,  this  book,  he  thinks,  will  be 
abused.  It  is  intended  to  accompaijy  the  reading  of 
essays,  and  to  serve  as  a  sort  of  reading-glass  for  the 
clearer  disclosure  of  their  distinguishing  character- 
istics, their  merits,  their  delights.  For  experienced 
readers  of  essays  it  offers  little;  beginners  and  occa- 
'  sional  readers  it  should  serve  to  make  rapidly  more 
experienced. 

A  meritorious  essay,  like  any  other  piece  of  real 
literature,  has  distinction  and  worth  quite  apart  from 
other  essays  and  from  the  author  who  wrote  it.  More^ 
definitely  than  most  kinds  of  literature,  however,  thei 
essay  acquires  added  interest  from  a  knowledge  of 
other  essays  and  from  acquaintance  with  the  author 
as  a  man.  The  subjective  quality  of  the  essay,  the 
painting  of  self  which  philosophy  no  less  than  tradi- 
tion assigns  to  it  as  a  distinguishing  feature,  makes 
the  reason  for  this  readily  apparent.  In  order  to  ap- 
preciate Of  Studies  and  Von  Ranke's  History  of  the 
Popes  to  the  full,  one  needs  to  know  how  each  is  re- 
lated  to   other   essays;   to   enjoy  Mrs.    Battle,    The 

iii 


iv  PREFACE 

Daughter  of  Lebanon,  or  Walking  Tours  to  the  ut- 
most, one  needs  to  have  definite  impressions  of  Charles 
Lamb,  of  Thomas  De  Quincey,  of  Robert  Louis  Stev- 
enson. 

No  further  apology  need  be  offered   for  a  hand- 
book of  the  English  essay. 

W.  H.  D. 

October,  1916. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTliJt 

FAOB 

Preface       . 

.     i 

I.    Origin  and  Early  Exponents 

Montaigne     .         .         .         .         . 

I 

Bacon   ...... 

4 

Cowley  ...... 

9 

II.    Eighteenth  Century  Essayists 

Steele  and  Addison 

12 

Johnson          ..... 

.        25 

Goldsmith      ..... 

.      30 

III.    Nineteenth  Century  Essayists 

Lamb 

.      35 

Hazlitt 

.      45 

Irving 

.      57 

Hunt 

•      71 

De  Quincey            .... 

.      84 

Carlyle           ..... 

.      95 

Macaulay       ..... 

.       112 

Newman        ...... 

.       122 

Emerson        ...... 

.      135 

Thackeray 

•       151 

Ruskin 

.       161 

Arnold           ...... 

.       172 

Stevenson      .         .         .         .         .         . 

.  185 

Appendix    I,  Kinds  of  Essays  .         .         .         . 

.  196 

Appendix  II,  Minor  English  Essayists 

Seventeenth  Century      .         .         .         . 

.  198 

Eighteenth  Century        .         .         .         . 

.   199 

Nineteenth   Century       .         .         .         . 

.       201 

Appendix  III,  Contemporary  Essayists 

.      205 

Index         

.      209 

V 

"There  is  in  him  that  which  does  not  die ;  that  Beauty  and 
Earnestness  of  soul,  that  spirit  of  Humanity,  of  Love  and 
mild  Wisdom,  over  which  the  vicissitudes  of  mode  have  no 
sway.  This  is  that  excellence  of  the  inmost  nature  which 
alone  confers  immortality  on  writings." 

Thomas  Carlyle:  Richter. 


c^ 


5^-^ 


ENGLISH    ESSAYISTS 


I.  ORIGIN  AND  EARLY  EXPONENTS 

•V- 

THE  essay  is,  of  course,  not  peculiarly  the  product^ 
of  England.  Writings  resembling  modern  es- 
says may  be  traced  at  least  as  far  back  as  the  Epistles 
of  Seneca  (died  A.  D.  65).  And  it  was  a  modern 
Frenchman  who  first  made  use  of  the  title  Essays 
(Essais),  who  first  gave  to  this  type  of  literary  compo- 
sition a  definite  vogue,  and  who  has  been  looked  up  to 
by  English  essayists  as  their  literary  father.  This 
Frenchman,  Michel  de  Montaigne  (1533- 1592),  may 
properly  be  considered  the  originator  of  the  essay. 

In  1 571,  under  circumstances  which  he  himself  de- 
scribes, Montaigne  composed  the  earliest  of  his  essays. 
In  1580,  a  volume  of  his  essays  was  published  at  Bor- 
deaux. Copies  were  undoubtedly  soon  conveyed  to 
England.  In  1603,  an  English  translation  appeared: 
William  Shakespeare  quite  certainly  possessed  a  copy. 
Bacon  and  later  writers  frequently  refer  to  Montaigne. 
It  is  important,  therefore,  to  observe  the  nature  and 
the  intentions  of  the  man  who  hit  upon  this  new  and 
enduring  kind  of  literary  composition. 

Superficially  regarded,  Montaigne  was  a  well-edu- 
cated gentleman  of  active  intellect  and  facile  pen,  living 


Id^t 


2  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

ifi  retirettietit,  and  finding  in  the  occupation  of  writing 
an  interesting  diversion.  In  his  essay  Of  Idleness,  he 
says: 

"When  I  lately  retired  myself  to  my  own  house,  with  a 
resolution,  as  much  as  possibly  I  could,  to  avoid  all  manner 
of  concern  in  affairs,  and  to  spend  in  privacy  and  repose 
the  little  remainder  of  time  I  had  to  live,  I  fancied  I  could 
not  more  oblige  my  mind  than  to  suffer  it  at  full  leisure  to 
entertain  and  divert  itself,  which  I  hoped  it  might  now  the 
better  be  entrusted  to  do,  as  being  by  time  and  observation 
become  more  settled  and  mature;  but  I  find, 

'Veriam  semper  dant  otia  mentem.* 
*E'en  in  the  most  retir'd  estate 
Leisure  itself  does  various  thoughts  create:' 
that,  quite  the  contrary,  it   is  like  a  horse  having  broken 
from  his   rider,  who  voluntarily   runs  into  a  much  wilder 
career  than  any  horseman  would  put  him  to,  and  creates  me 
so  many  chimaeras  and  fantastic  monsters,  one  upon  another, 
without  order  or  design,  that,  the  better  at  leisure  to  con- 
template their  strangeness  and  absurdity,  I  have  begun  to 
commit   them   to   writing,   hoping   in   time   to   make   them 
ashamed  of  themselves." 

More  deeply  considered,  Montaigne  was  a  man  of 
singular  independence  of  mind  and  singular  frankness 
of  disposition.  He  adopted  as  his  motto,  "Que  sgais- 
je?'\  "What  do  I  know?" ;  he  refused  to  accept  merely 
on  the  authority  of  others  statements  not  verified  by 
his  own  experience. 

Emerson  imagines  Montaigne  saying  to  himself : 

"I  stand  here  for  truth,  and  will  not,  for  all  the  states, 
and  churches,  and  revenues,  and  personal  reputations  of 
Europe,  overstate  the  dry  fact,  as  I  see  it;  I  will  rather 


ORIGIN  AND  EARLY  EXPONENTS  3 

mumble  and  prose  about  what  I  certainly  know, — my  house 
and  barns ;  my  father,  my  wife,  and  my  tenants ;  my  old  lean 
bald  pate ;  my  knives  and  forks ;  what  meats  I  eat,  and  what 
drinks  I  prefer;  and  a  hundred  straws  just  as  ridiculous, — 
than  I  will  write,  with  a  fine  crow-quill,  a  fine  romance.  I 
like  gray  days,  and  autumn  and  winter  weather.  I  am  gray 
and  autumnal  myself,  and  I  think  an  undress,  and  old  shoes 
that  do  not  pinch  my  feet,  and  old  friends  who  do  not  con- 
strain me,  and  plain  topics  where  I  do  not  need  to  strain 
myself  and  pump  my  brains,  the  most  suitable." 

And  Emerson  continues: 

"The  'Essays,'  therefore,  are  an  entertaining  soliloquy  on 
every  random  topic  that  comes  into  his  head ;  treating  every- 
thing without  ceremony,  yet  with  masculine  sense." 

Emerson  here  expresses  one  quality  of  the  essay  as 
developed  by  Montaigne.  Another  important  quality 
is  pointedly  expressed  by  Montaigne  himself  in  his 
Author  to  the  Reader: 

"This,  reader,  is  a  book  without  guile.  It  tells  thee,  at 
the  very  outset,  that  I  had  no  other  end  in  putting  it  together 
but  what  was  domestic  and  private.  ...  It  was  intended  for 
the  particular  use  of  my  relations  and  friends,  in  order  that, 
when  they  have  lost  me,  which  they  must  soon  do,  they  may 
here  find  some  traces  of  my  quality  and  humor,  and  may 
therefore  nourish  a  more  entire  and  lively  recollection  of 
me  .  .  .  'twas  my  wish  to  be  seen  in  my  simple,  natural, 
and  ordinary  garb,  without  study  or  artifice,  for  'twas  myself 
I  had  to  paint.  .  .  .  Thus,  reader,  thou  perceivest  I  am 
myself  the  subject  of  my  book.  .  .  ." 

The  random  nature  of  the  topics  treated,  and  the  un- 
disguised revelation  of  himself,  are  two  striking  char- 


4  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

acteristics  of  Montaigne's  essays.  Two  others  are  the 
marked  extent  to  which  he  fortifies  his  opinions  by  ex- 
amples and  testimony  from  classical  authors,  and  the 
aptness  and  general  attractiveness  of  his  writing. 

Such,  then,  in  brief,  was  the  essay  as  it  was  first 
developed.  It  was  not  systematic  in  arrangement.  It 
was  not  didactic,  educational,  in  its  purpose.  It  was 
in  prose.  It  was  not  romance,  although  it  included 
much  that  was  narration.  Each  topic  was  treated 
briefly,  not  comprehensively.  The  impression  left 
upon  the  reader  was  less  of  the  subject  discussed  than 
of  the  man  writing. 

With  comparatively  insignificant  variations,  which 
may  be  noted  as  the  essay  is  traced  down  the  centuries, 
the  type  has  persisted  to  the  present  day  essentially  as 
devised  by  Montaigne.^ 

FRANCIS,  LORD  BACON  (1561-1626) 
Chronology 

1561  Born,  January  22,  London;  son  of  Lord  Keeper. 

1573-1575  At  Trinity  College,  Cambridge.  1575,  to  Gray's 
Inn. 

1582  Barrister.  1584,  elected  to  Parliament.  Ambitious 
as  a  student;  pecuniary  troubles.  Friendship 
with  Earl  of  Essex. 

1597  Essays  or  Counsells,  Civill  and  Morall  (10).  Re- 
printed and  enlarged,  1612  (38)  ;  1625  (58). 
Betrayed  Essex.  Political  activity.  One  of 
Queen's  Learned  Counsel. 

1603  Accession  of  James.     Bacon  in  favor. 

*  Montaigne's  Essais  were  republished  in  1588  and  in  1596. 
Important  translations  since  Florio's  (1603)  are  one  by  Charles 
Cotton  (1680)  ;  and  one  by  William  Hazlitt,  son  of  the  essay- 
ist  (1841),  a  revision,  merely,  of  Cotton's. 


ORIGIN  AND  EARLY  EXPONENTS  S 

1605  Advancement  of  Learning.  1606,  Solicitor  Gen- 
eral. 

1613  Attorney  General.  Struggle  with  Coke  over  rela- 
tive positions  of  judges  and  Crown. 

1617  Lord  Keeper.  1618,  Lord  Chancellor.  Baron 
Verulam.    Conducted  prosecution  of  Raleigh. 

1620  Novum  Organum.  1621,  Viscount  St.  Albans. 
Disclosures  of  bribery.  Convicted.  Fined,  im- 
prisoned.   History  of  Henry  VII. 

1623  Advancement  of  Learning  in  Latin. 

1625  Refused  a  pardon. 

1626  Died,  April  9,  from  exposure  while  conducting  a 

scientific  experiment. 

The  essays  of  Sir  Francis  Bacon  are  usually  con- 
sidered as  belonging  to  the  type  of  literature  origin- 
ated by  Montaigne.  It  may  readily  be  maintained 
that  posterity  has  here  been  deceived  by  a  name.  The 
personal,  the  subjective  element  so  marked  in  the  case 
of  "essays"  is  in  Bacon  insignificant.^  Thought  and 
expression  alike  in  Bacon  resemble  the  Book  of 
Proverbs,  the  meditations  of  Marcus  Aurelius,  rather 
than  the  more  or  less  whimsical,  always  flowing, 
seldom  formal  writing  of  other  essayists.  It  appears 
that  whereas  Montaigne  used  the  term  essai  in  its 

*  A  letter  intended  by  him  to  serve  as  the  Dedicatory  Epistle 
to  the  1612  edition  contains  the  following:  "To  write  just 
treatises,  requireth  leisure  in  the  writer,  and  leisure  in  the 
reader,  and  therefore  are  not  so  fit,  neither  in  regard  of  your 
highness's  princely  affairs,  nor  in  regard  of  my  continual  service; 
which  is  the  cause  that  hath  made  me  choose  to  write  certain 
brief  notes,  set  down  rather  significantly  than  curiously,  which 
I  have  called  Essays.  The  word  is  late,  but  the  thing  is  ancient; 
for  Seneca's  Epistles  to  Lucilius,  if  you  mark  them  well,  are  but 
essays,  that  is,  dispersed  meditations,  though  conveyed  in  the 
form  of   epistles."  (^ 


6  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

original  Latin  sense  of  exagium,  a  weighing  or  balanc- 
ing (his  motto  appeared  beneath  the  device  of  a  pair 
of  scales),  Bacon  plainly  used  the  term  essay  in  the 
sense  of  experiment  or  trial,  an  essay  toward  a  com- 
plete treatment :  he  spoke  of  his  essays  as  being  not 
"just  treatises,"  but  "brief  notes,"  as  "dispersed  medi- 
tations," that  is,  scattered  thoughts.  In  so  far,  to 
be  sure,  as  they  "come  home  to  men's  business  and 
bosoms"  ^  and  present  things  "whereof  a  man  shall 
find  much  in  experience,  and  little  in  books,"  ^  they 
do  resemble  Montaigne's.  On  the  whole,  however. 
Bacon's  essays  seem  themselves  to  represent  an  orig- 
inal experiment  in  writing  English,  one  of  the  experi- 
ments with  the  vernacular  so  common  in  Elizabethan 
times,  an  experiment  of  permanent  value  and  signifi- 
cance, yet  virtually  unique  in  English  literature,  and 
not  strictly  belonging  to  the  field  of  the  English 
Essay.  ^ 

No  book  on  the  Essay,  however,  can  as  yet  omit 
to  treat  of  Francis  Bacon. 

Lord  Bacon  has  four  claims  to  greatness :  his 
achievements  as  a  statesman,  his  record  as  a  phi- 
losopher and  scientist,  his  work  as  a  historian,  and — 
a  claim  with  which  each  of  the  others  is  closely  con- 
nected— the  writing  of  his  Essays  or  Counsells,  Civill 
and  Morall. 

*  Dedication  of  1625  Edition. 
'  Epistle  referred  to  above. 

•Cf.    The  Rise  of  English  Literary  Prose j  by  G.  P.  Krapp, 
Oxford    University    Press,    1915,    the    chapter    on    Bacon,    pp. 

S35-S4I. 


ORIGIN  AND  EARLY  EXPONENTS  7 

As  an  able  son  of  the  Lord  Keeper  of  the  Privy 
Seal,  Francis  Bacon  entered  early  upon  public  life. 
A  barrister  at  twenty-one,  he  was  elected  to  Parlia- 
ment two  years  later.  Some  opposition  which  he 
offered  to  certain  of  Queen  Elizabeth's  plans,  pre- 
vented the  rapid  rise  to  which  his  talents  entitled  him. 
He  did  become,  in  1595,  one  of  the  Queen's  Learned 
Counsel.  In  this  capacity  he  conducted  the  successful 
prosecution  of  his  friend  and  benefactor,  the  Earl  of 
Essex,  on  trial  for  acts  which  Bacon  had  encouraged 
him  to  commit.  But  the  Queen  died  without  granting 
Bacon  any  signal  favor. 

Under  James  he  rose  gradually  to  the  position  of 
Lord  Chancellor  and  was  created  Baron  Verulam 
(1618).  From  the  chancellorship  he  was  deposed 
(1621),  following  his  trial  and  conviction,  before 
hostile  judges,  for  bribery.  The  cause  of  his  downfall 
is  discoverable  not  only  in  his  own  acts,  but  in  the 
growth  of  democratic  sentiment  in  England.  Bacon 
had  persistently  fought  for  intelligent  exaltation  of 
royal  power  above  popular  control  in  both  Parliament 
and  the  courts.  In  so  far  as  he  was  guilty,  he  had 
but  conformed  to  a  custom  of  the  times.  He  had  been 
imprudent  but  not  base,  he  was  less  a  culprit  than  a 
victim.  As  a  statesman  his  conceptions  were  wise 
and  his  achievements  noteworthy. 

Throughout  his  life  he  had  dearly  cherished  the 
thought  of  retiring  on  means  sufficient  to  enable  him 
to  study  and  write.  This  he  was  never  able  to  do. 
In  all  available  intervals,  however,  he  devoted  him- 
self to  questions  of  philosophy  and  natural  science. 


8  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

He  took  "all  knowledge  for  his  province."  And  such 
were  his  insight  and  his  foresight  that  he  laid  founda- 
tions in  thought  for  inductive  science,  the  first-hand 
observation  and  study  of  nature.  He  considered  the 
accounts  of  life  and  of  nature  already  existing  as 
"pretty  and  probable  conjectures."  ^  As  a  means  of 
securing  "certain  and  demonstrable  knowledge,"  he 
advocated  the  method  which  "derives  axioms  from 
the  senses  and  particulars,  rising  by  a  gradual  and 
unbroken  ascent,  so  that  it  arrives  at  the  most  general 
actions  last  of  all."  ^  He  was  able  to  make  only  the 
crudest  applications  of  the  method;  he  died  from 
exposure  encountered  while  stuffing  a  fresh-killed 
chicken  with  snow  in  order  to  test  the  effect  of  cold 
as  a  preservative  of  animal  tissues.  But  the  method 
is  that  of  Darwin  and  of  all  modern  science. 

As  a  historian  his  most  important  work  is  a  History 
of  Henry  VH,  written  after  his  deposition.  In  ac- 
curacy, justice,  and  penetration  it  is  of  the  highest 
rank.  It  is  regrettable  that  his  proposed  History  of 
Henry  VIII  was  never  written. 

The  experience  of  the  statesman,  the  wisdom  of 
the  philosopher,  the  justice  and  expressiveness  of  the 
historian,  find  their  confluence  in  Bacon's  Essays. 
What  in  the  first  (1596)  edition  had  been  little  more 
than  rough  accumulations  of  aphorisms — ^" fragments 
of  his  conceits,"  ^  in  the  later  editions  became  more 
continuous  and  more  rounded — "the  best  fruits,  that 


^  Novum  Organum,  Preface. 
*  Aphorisms,  xix. 
8  Dedicatory  Epistle. 


ORIGIN  AND  EARLY  EXPONENTS  9 

by  the  good  increase  which  God  gives  to  my  pen  and 
labors  I  could  yield."  They  contain  the  ripest  and 
wisest  conclusions  of  his  rich,  active,  comprehensive 
mind.  In  his  own  day,  even,  the  Essays,  to  use  his 
own  words,  "of  all  my  other  works  have  been  most 
current."  The  expectation  which  he  expressed  (oddly 
enough!)  concerning  a  Latin  version  of  them,  is 
likely  to  be  fulfilled  by  the  English  version:  it  was, 
that  they  "may  last  as  long  as  books  last." 

ABRAHAM  COWLEY  (1618-1667) 

Chronology 
1 61 8  Born  in  London,  son  of  a  stationer.    Fondness  for 

Faerie  Queene.    Scholar  in  Westminster  School. 
1633  Poeticall  Blossoms,  five  poems,  published. 
1637-1643    At    Trinity    College,    Cambridge.      Dramatic 

pieces.     B.  A.,  1639;  M.  A.,  1642;  ejected,  1643; 

welcomed  at  Royalist  Oxford,  St.  John's. 

1646  Followed  Queen  to  France.    Diplomatic  missions. 

1647  ^^^  Mistress,  favorite  love-poems  of  the  period. 
1656  M.  D.  at  Oxford. 

1660  Ode  On  the  Blessed  Restoration.    Member  of  the 

newly-founded  Royal  Society. 
1665  Retired  to  Chertsey,  Queen's  lands. 

1667  Died,  July  28.     Buried  near  Chaucer  and  Spenser 

in  Westminster  Abbey. 

1668  Several  Discourses  by  Way  of  Essays  in  Verse  and 

Prose. 

The  generalizing,  impersonal  quality  which  marks 
Bacon's  Essays  or  Counsells  as  outside  the  field  of 
the  English  Essay,  is  not  characteristic  of  Abraham 
Cowley's  prose.  He  uses  the  term  Essays  {Several 
Discourses  by  Way  of  Essays  in  Verst  and  Prose) 


10  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

as  Bacon  used  it ;  ^  but  his  text  is  the  intimate,  direct, 
graceful  chatting  of  an  Anglicized  Montaigne.  And 
Cowley,  notwithstanding  the  slender  amount  of  his 
production  in  this  form,  should  be  regarded  as  the 
real  father  of  the  English  Essay. 

Like  Montaigne's  essays,  Cowley's  were  probably 
not  directly  intended  for  public  circulation.  Like 
Montaigne's,  they  present  the  fruit  of  an  active  and 
varied  life. 

Abraham  Cowley  was  the  posthumous  son  of  a 
London  stationer.  The  striking  feature  of  his  child- 
hood was  his  sustained  fondness  for  Spenser's  Faerie 
Queene.  He  was  educated  at  Westminster  School 
and  at  Trinity  College,  Cambridge.  His  Poeticall 
Blossoms,  containing  five  poems,  was  published  when 
he  was  only  fifteen  years  old.  He  did  some  dramatic 
writing,  moreover,  in  both  English  and  Latin,  at  Cam- 
bridge, and  took  there  the  usual  degrees. 

Largely  because  of  his  Royalist  inclinations  he  was 
ejected  from  the  University  in  1643,  ^.nd  took  refuge 
in  more  conservative  Oxford.  In  1646  he  joined  the 
court  of  the  fugitive  Queen  in  France.  From  here 
he  was  sent  on  various  diplomatic  missions,  one  of 
them  to  England,  where,  still  acting  as  a  Royalist 
agent,  he  studied  medicine  at  Oxford.  Other  poetical 
works  had  appeared  at  intervals,  and  the  Restoration 
inspired  still  others,  mostly  in  the  form  of  Odes. 

The  opportunity  for  retirement,  which  even  more 

genuinely  than  Bacon  he  seems  long  to  have  been 

*The   Verse  consists   of   experiments — not  of   random  solilo- 
quies. 


ORIGIN  AND  EARLY  EXPONENTS  H 

seeking,  came  at  last.  He  secured  a  favorable  lease 
of  some  of  the  Queen^s  lands  in  Chertsey,  and  went 
there  in  1665  to  live.  At  his  death  in  1667  he  was 
thought  worthy  to  lie  beside  Chaucer  and  Spenser  in 
Westminster  Abbey. 

It  was  while  at  Chertsey  that  he  wrote  most  of  his 
eleven  essays.  "The  last  pieces  that  we  have  from  his 
hands,'*  says  his  biographer.  Bishop  Sprat,  "are  Dis- 
courses by  Way  of  Essays  upon  some  of  the  gravest 
subjects  that  concern  the  Contentment  of  a  Virtuous 
Mind.  These  he  intended  as  a  real  Character  of  his 
own  thoughts,  upon  the  point  of  his  Retirement  .  .  . 
an  unfeigned  Image  of  his  Soul.  .  .  .''  He  refers 
more  than  once  in  them  to  "Sieur  Montague,"  and  it 
is  plain  that  he  follows  Montaigne  in  independence 
of  thought,  in  apt  discursiveness,  and  in  free  use  of 
passages  from  the  ancient  authors  and  of  items  from 
his  own  experience.    He  deserves  wider  recognition. 

[Additional  seventeenth-century  essayists  might  be 
considered.  One  of  them,  John  Dryden,  wrote  nu- 
merous critical  prefaces  which  quite  definitely  pre- 
figure certain  essays  of  later  authors.  These  writings 
of  Dryden's,  however,  were  invariably  subordinate  to 
the  poetical  or  dramatic  compositions  which  they  ac- 
companied ;  and  he  is  allied  in  neither  spirit  nor  method 
with  the  other  recognized  essayists.  Though  a  major 
poet,  dramatist,  and  prose  writer,  he  is  a  minor  essay- 
ist. With  other  minor  essayists  of  different  centuries, 
he  will  be  found  included  in  an  alphabetical  list  at 
the  end  of  the  Handbook.] 


II.     EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS- 
PERIODICAL  ESSAYS 

STEELE  AND  ADDISON 
Chronology 
Sir  Richard  Steele  (1672-1729) 
1672  Born,  March  12,  in  Dublin. 
1684  Entered  Charterhouse  School. 
1689  Entered  Christ's  Church,  Oxford. 
1694  Left  college;  enlisted  in  Horse  Guards. 
1700  Made  Captain.     1701,  The  Christian  Hero — result 

of  a  duel. 
1702  The  Funeral;  other  plays. 
1709  The  Tatler,    Appointed  Gazetteer. 
171 1  The  Spectator.    Other  periodicals  subsequently. 
1713  Entered    Parliament.      1714,    expelled    from    that 

body. 
171 5  Reentered  Parliament  and  was  knighted. 
1718  Death  of  Lady  Steele.    1726,  retired  to  Wales. 
1729  Died  at  Carmarthen,  September  i. 

Joseph  Addison  (1672-1719) 

1672  Born,  May  i,  in  Milston. 

1686  Entered  Charterhouse.    1687,  Entered  Queen's  Col- 
lege, Oxford. 

1693  M.  A.    Verses,  scholarship. 

1 699- 1 703  Travel  and  study  on  the  continent. 

1704  The  Campaign.    Under-secretary  of  state. 

1709  Contributed  from  Ireland  to  The  Tatler. 

1711-1714  The    Spectator.      1713,    Cato.      Hostility    of 
Alexander  Pope. 
12 


EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  13 

1716  Married   Countess   of   Warwick. 

171 7  Secretary  of  State  with  Lord  Sunderland. 
1719  Political  dispute  with  Steele.    Died,  June  17. 

THE  essay  as  a  type  of  literature  owes  little  more 
to  Montaigne  and  Cowley  than  it  does  to  Steele 
and  Addison.  For  these  gifted  and  alert  men  erected 
the  type  out  of  obscurity  into  popularity,  and  thereby 
into  what  seems  to  be  permanence.  By  presenting 
essays  in  the  new  and  fortunate  medium  of  periodical 
publications,  by  persistently  bringing  home  the  essay 
to  the  "business  and  bosoms"  of  men,  and  by  giving 
to  the  form  both  superficial  and  pervading  attractive- 
ness, Steele  and  Addison  instituted  the  golden  age  of 
the  essay,  so  far  as  popularity  is  concerned,  an  age 
which  essay-writers  since  then  have  dreamed  of  re- 
viving, not  of  surpassing. 

The  widely  known  facts  concerning  the  life  of  each 
writer  may  be  swiftly  rehearsed.  And  as  Addison's 
senior  by  a  few  weeks,  and  as  the  actual  originator 
of  The  Tatter  and  The  Spectator,  Steele  deserves  to 
be  considered  first.  An  analysis  of  what  the  two  men 
accomplished  in  the  field  of  the  essay  properly  suc- 
ceeds the  brief  account  of  their  lives. 

Richard  Steele  was  born  in  Dublin,  March  i2,  1672. 
His  father,  a  well-to-do  Dublin  attorney,  died  before 
Richard  was  five  years  old,  his  mother  soon  after- 
wards. At  fourteen  he  was  admitted  to  Charter- 
house School  in  London,  and  here  he  formed  the 
acquaintance  and  the  friendship  of  Addison.    Christ's 


14  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

Church,  Oxford,  which  he  entered  later,  he  left,  with- 
out taking  a  degree,  to  become  secretary  to  Lord 
Cutts  and  a  captain  in  his  regiment  of  the  Horse 
Guards.  Thackeray  in  Henry  Esmond  depicts  with 
only  slight  exaggeration  the  Steele  of  this  period,  his 
chivalry  and  his  good  comradeship.  The  sterner  side 
of  his  character  appears  in  the  active  dislike  for  duel- 
ing which  he  conceived  after  having  dangerously 
wounded  his  opponent  in  a  conventional  duel,  and  in 
his  Christian  Hero,  which  was  prompted  by  this  ex- 
perience and  was  published  in  1701. 

The  success  of  this  work  and  of  some  occasional 
verse  previously  composed  seems  to  have  determined 
him  for  literature.  Three  plays,  each  almost  frankly 
reformatory  in  purpose,  he  produced  in  turn.  At 
length  he  received  political  recognition  by  being  ap- 
pointed Gazetteer,  that  is,  editor  of  the  government 
news  organ.  His  first  wife,  whom  he  had  married 
in  1703,  died  in  1706;  the  next  year  he  married  Miss 
Mary  Scurlock  of  Carmarthen,  Wales. 

It  was  in  1709  that  he  established  The  Tatler.  It 
ran  until  January  2,  1710-11,  when  the  identity  of  its 
author  had  become  known.  The  Spectator  followed  in 
171 1,  and  continued  until  1713.  In  both  he  was  as- 
sisted by  Addison.  Many  similar  and  always  short- 
lived literary  ventures  occupied  Steele  to  the  end  of 
his  active  life.  He  was  elected  to  Parliament  in  1713, 
but  the  next  year  was  convicted  of  seditious  libel  and 
expelled.  He  returned  to  favor  under  George  I,  was 
knighted  by  him,  and  again  entered  Parliament. 

In  1 718  Lady  Steele  died.     A  breach  with  Addi- 


EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  IS 

son,  caused  chiefly  by  political  differences,  widened  as 
the  years  passed,  and  remained  unhealed  at  Addison's 
death  in  17 19.  In  1724  Steele  retired  from  active 
life  to  his  deceased  wife's  estate  at  Carmarthen,  where 
on  September  i,  1729,  he  died. 

Joseph  Addison  was  born  May  i,  1672,  in  Milston. 
His  father  was  later  the  dean  of  Lichfield  Cathedral. 
Addison  entered  Charterhouse  School,  London,  in 
1686,  and  the  next  year  went  up  to  Oxford.  He  re- 
received  an  M.A.  from  Magdalen  College  in  1693. 
From  1698  to  171 1  he  held  a  fellowship.  His  verses, 
both  in  Latin  and  in  English,  won  him  great  praise 
from  Dryden,  and  one  of  his  compositions  brought 
a  pension  from  the  government.  From  1699  to  1703 
he  traveled  on  the  continent. 

His  first  literary  triumph  was  his  poem.  The  Cawr 
paign,  written  at  the  request  of  the  government  in 
1704  to  celebrate  the  victory  of  Marlborough  at  Blen- 
heim. In  order  to  enlist  on  the  side  of  the  govern- 
ment the  talents  this  poem  displayed  he  was  promptly 
made  under-secretary  of  state.  His  literary  reputa- 
tion and  skill,  together  with  such  controversial  writ- 
ings as  he  found  occasion  to  prdBctuce,  secured  him 
many  other  remunerative  public  offices  from  time  to 
time,  and  a  liberal  pension  upon  his  retirement. 

Addison  was  not  at  his  best  either  as  a  controver- 
sialist or  as  a  poet.  His  gentle  ingenuity,  his  wide 
learning,  his  uprightness,  and  his  quiet  humor  first 
found  adequate  expression  in  The  Tatler.  Addison 
was   stationed   in   Ireland  when  this  periodical   was 


i6  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

established  by  Steele ;  but  he  recognized  it  as  the  work 
of  his  friend,  and  contributed  to  it  more  and  more 
frequently  as  it  progressed.  To  The  Spectator,  like- 
wise started  by  Steele,  he  contributed  even  more 
papers  than  Steele  himself.^  He,  of  course,  con- 
tributed to  later  periodicals  also.  His  Cato,  a  play 
produced  with  notable  success  at  Drury  Lane  Theatre 
in  1 7 13,  was  an  able  dramatic  venture;  but  his  poems 
and  his  miscellaneous  prose  writings  are  insignificant 
in  comparison  with  his  essays. 

His  later  life  was  embittered  by  two  unfortunate 
quarrels.  One  was  precipitated  by  Alexander  Pope, 
who  believed  Addison  guilty  of  conspiring  to  under- 
rate his  Iliad.  Some  of  the  bitterest  lines  in  Pope's 
bitter  Epistle  to  Dr,  Arbuthnot  were  directed  at  Ad- 
dison. 

The  other  break  was  with  Steele.  This  was  largely 
owing  to  political  differences  which  Steele  took  no 
pains  to  minimize  or  repair.  It  seems  to  have  been 
partly  due  to  unfriendly  rigor  shown  by  Addison  in 
collecting  from  Steele  a  loan  of  one  thousand  pounds. 
Addison  died  unreconciled.  The  calumny  heaped  upon 
him  in  these  quarrels  is  in  strong  contrast  to  the  praise 
expressed  by  the  great  body  of  his  contemporaries. 

In  1 718  Addison  retired  on  a  pension.  The  next 
year,  June  17,  1719,  he  died,  and  was  buried  in  West- 
minster Abbey. 

The  Tatler,  in  which  the  essays  of  these  men  first 
appeared,  was  by  no  means  the  first  of  English  period- 
*Out  of  555  papers,  Steele  wrote  236,  Addison  274. 


EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  i? 

icals.  Various  ones  had  appeared  and  had  been  dis- 
continued ;  and  Daniel  Defoe's  Review,  first  published 
in  1704,  was  still  being  issued.  Two  things  Steele 
seems  to  have  learned  directly  from  Defoe :  the  disad- 
vantages of  presenting  merely  news  and  political  con- 
troversy, and  the  attractiveness  inherent  in  questions 
of  prevailing  manners  and  morals.  As  the  Review 
had  reported  the  bald  discussions  of  a  certain  "Scan- 
dalous Club,"  so  in  a  kindlier,  a  more  constructive 
spirit  The  Tatler  presented,  in  letter  form,  the  obser- 
vations and  cogitations  of  "an  old  man,  a  philosopher, 
a  humorist,  an  astrologer,  and  a  censor,"  who  called 
himself  Isaac  Bicker  staff.  The  flexibility  of  the 
scheme  is  indicated  by  this  statement  in  Number  i : 

"All  accounts  of  gallantry,  pleasure,  and  entertainment, 
shall  be  under  the  article  of  White's  Chocolate  House;  po- 
etry, under  that  of  Will's  Coffee-house;  learning,  under  the 
title  of  Grecian;  foreign  and  domestic  news,  you  will  have 
from  St.  James's  Coffee-house;  and  what  else  I  have  to 
offer  on  any  subject  shall  be  dated  from  my  own  apart- 
ment." 

The  nom  de  plume,  Isaac  Bicker  staff,  was  a  well- 
chosen  one  for  the  prompt  popularity  of  Steele's  novel 
periodical.  It  was  in  the  character  of  an  astrologer 
by  that  name  that  Jonathan  Swift  had  published  in 
1708  his  Predictions  for  the  Year  1/08,  a  piercing 
satire  on  prognosticating  almanac  makers,  particu- 
larly on  one  notorious  hoax  named  John  Partridge. 
It  is  worth  while  to  add  further  details  concerning 
this  matter. 


i8  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

The  very  first  of  the  "predictions'*  indulged  in  by 
Swift  as  Isaac  Bickerstaff,  Esq.,  was  that  Partridge 
"will  infallibly  die  upon  the  29th  of  March  next,  about 
eleven  at  night,  of  a  raging  fever."  Swift  followed 
up  the  original  prediction  with  an  account,  in  an 
anonymous  Letter  to  a  Person  of  Honor,  of  the  death 
of  Partridge  at  "five  minutes  after  seven,  by  which 
it  is  clear  that  Mr.  Bickerstaff  was  mistaken  almost 
four  hours  in  his  calculations."  A  Vindication  of 
Isaac  Bickerstaff,  Esq.,  also  appeared,  "proving"  the 
said  Partridge  to  be  dead.  Meanwhile  Partridge  had 
loudly  protested  the  imposture  of  Bickerstaff,  and 
the  reality  of  his  own  continued  fleshly  existence. 

The  Tatler  was  thus  launched  upon  a  town  con- 
vulsed with  laughter  and  ready  to  devour  anything 
bearing  the  name  of  the  fictitious  astrologer.  "By 
this  good  fortune,"  as  Steele  wrote  in  the  Dedication 
of  the  first  volume  of  collected  papers,  "the  name  of 
Isaac  Bickerstaff  gained  an  audience  of  all  who  had 
any  taste  of  wit";  and  the  initial  success  of  the  ven- 
ture was  assured. 

The  Tatler  retained  the  attention  of  its  audience. 
It  circulated  even  to  Ireland,  where  Addison  recog- 
nized it  as  the  work  of  Steele.  Contributions  from 
Addison,  as  well  as  from  Dryden,  Swift,  and  others, 
helped  to  maintain  its  popularity.  And  though  the 
earlier  of  the  two  great  essay-periodicals,  it  contains 
many  of  the  best  essays  of  each  of  the  principal 
authors. 

The  Tatler  was  discontinued,  however,  with  the 
271st  number.     The  reason  for  discontinuing  it  is 


EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  19 

conveyed  by  what  Steele  over  his  own  name  wrote 
in  this  final  issue: 

"This  work  indeed  has  for  some  time  been  disagreeable 
to  me,  and  the  purpose  of  it  wholly  lost  by  my  being  so  long 
understood  as  the  author.  ...  I  shall  not  carry  my  humility 
so  far  as  to  call  myself  a  vicious  man,  but  at  the  same  time 
must  confess  my  life  is  at  best  but  pardonable.  And  with  no 
greater  character  than  this  a  man  would  make  at  best  but 
an  indifferent  progress  in  attacking  prevailing  and  fashion- 
able vices,  which  Mr.  Bickerstaff  has  done  with  a  freedom 
of  spirit,  that  would  have  lost  both  its  beauty  and  efficacy 
had  it  been  pretended  to  by  Mr.  Steele." 

In  this  final  issue,  and  again  in  the  preface  to  an 
edition  of  the  papers  in  book  form,  Steele  assigned  to 
Addison  the  most  generous  credit  for  his  assistance 
in  the  enterprise.  And  two  months  later,  on  March 
I,  171 1,  the  two  friends  issued  the  first  number  of 
The  Spectator. 

Many  circumstances  contributed  to  make  The  Spec- 
tat  or  more  widely  read  than  The  Tatler.  Of  course, 
it  appealed  directly  to  The  Tatler  audience  at  once, 
their  appetites  whetted,  not  appeased.  The  habit  of 
reading,  the  expectation  of  finding  pleasure  in  such 
reading,  had  spread.  Then  the  Spectator,  by  declar- 
ing in  his  first  paper  his  resolve  "to  observe  an  exact 
neutrality  between  the  Whigs  and  Tories,"  placed  his 
paper  finally  above  the  strife  of  parties.  Further- 
more, it  appeared  daily  instead  of  thrice  a  week.  And 
instead  of  having  communications  dated  from  differ- 
ent places,  the  Spectator  served  as  the  mouthpiece  of 
"The  Club,"  a  group  of  seven  in  all,  representing 


20  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

virtually  all  classes  of  English  reading  society.  The 
whole  machinery  of  communications,  of  personal 
idiosyncrasies,  of  supposed  places  and  times,  avail- 
able in  The  Tatler,  was  thus  in  The  Spectator  ren- 
dered sevenfold  more  flexible  and  responsive.  Then, 
too,  knowledge  of  its  real  authorship  was  less  likely 
to  turn  the  edge  of  its  criticisms.  Above  all,  the 
sustained  wit,  kindliness,  and  aptness  of  its  papers 
served  to  extend  its  circulation  and  increase  its  effec- 
tiveness. It  sold  in  what  then  seemed  stupendous 
quantities,  and  its  circulation  even  withstood  a 
doubling  of  the  price,  made  necessary  by  an  increase 
in  the  tax  on  paper. 

A  work  on  such  a  basis  naturally,  however,  could 
not  continue  indefinitely.  The  verisimilitude  which 
gave  it  such  charm  made  successive  changes  in  The 
Club  inevitable.  Sir  Roger  could  not  live  on  for 
many  years,  nor  Will  Honeycomb  continue  single, 
nor  the  Templar  be  always  an  idler.  The  Club  thus 
gradually  dissolved,  and  holding  out  in  Number  550 
some  hope  of  a  reorganization,  the  series  came  to  an 
end  with  Number  555,  signed  by  Richard  Steele,  on 
December  6,  1712.  The  promoters  promptly  occu- 
pied themselves  with  The  Guardian.  But  on  June  18, 
1 7 14,  The  Spectator  was  revived  by  a  Spectator  now 
loquacious,  instead  of  taciturn  as  before,  and  was 
continued  for  eighty  numbers,  one  volume  more,  the 
only  advertised  reason  being  that  the  earlier  series 
comprised  an  "odd  number"  of  volumes! 

Imitations  had  already  sprung  up  thickly  in  Lon- 
don.    Soon  they  were  appearing  in  Scotland,  in  the 


EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  21 

American  Colonies,  and  in  almost  every  country  in 
Europe.  By  1750  no  less  than  106  different  English 
periodicals  similar  to  The  Tatler  and  The  Spectator 
had  appeared.  By  1809,  that  is,  within  the  space  of 
one  hundred  years,  the  total  had  increased  to  221. 

There  are,  to  be  sure,  few  precise  counterparts  of 
these  essay-periodicals  among  our  current  magazines; 
but  various  sections  (Oldest  Inhabitant,  Easy  Chair, 
Observer,  Spectator,  etc.)  and  frequent  independent 
essays  in  our  modern  periodical  publications  daily 
proclaim  how  numerous  and  how  interesting  a  progeny 
Defoe's  Scandalous  Club,  Isaac  Bickerstaff,  Esq.,  and 
The  Spectator  have  begotten. 

Thus  by  publishing  essays  in  periodicals,  Steele  and 
Addison  contributed  immeasurably  to  the  firm  estab- 
lishment of  both  essays  and  periodicals  in  English 
literature.  The  genius  of  each  of  these  men  deserves 
full  recognition  for  the  vogue  given  by  them  to  the 
essay  in  The  Tatler  and  The  Spectator. 

Yet  the  writings  of  these  two  men  were  widely  read 
not  only  because  they  were  brief  and  frequent,  but 
because  they  were  also  apt  and  interesting.  In  a 
more  literal  sense  than  any  that  preceded  them  they 
dealt  with  things  humanly  important.  They  forsook 
the  attitude,  assumed  by  Montaigne's  Essais,  of  being 
entirely  of  personal  significance.  They  forsook  the 
lofty,  philosophizing  attitude  of  Bacon,  as  also  the 
timid,  groping  attitude  of  Cowley.  The  purpose  of 
each  periodical  was  reformatory.  Steele  stated  it  to 
be  the  general  purpose  of  The  Tatler  "to  expose  the 


22  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

false  arts  of  life,  to  pull  off  the  disguises  of  cunning, 
vanity,  and  affectation,  and  to  recommend  a  general 
simplicity  in  our  dress,  our  discourse,  and  our  be- 
havior" ;  ^  and  again :  "to  recommend  truth,  innocence, 
honor,  and  virtue,  as  the  chief  ornaments  of  life."  ^ 
The  Spectator  was  no  less  definite.  Writing  with  the 
hand  of  Addison  he  hopes  that  he  may  "contribute  to 
the  diversion  or  improvement  of  the  country,"  ^  and 
mentions  his  opportunity  for  "reprehending  those 
vices  which  are  too  trivial  for  the  chastisement  of  the 
law,  and  too  fantastical  for  the  cognizance  of  the 
pulpit."  *  The  vices  of  political  chicanery  and  par- 
tisanship, gambling  and  dueling,  vanity  and  prudish- 
ness,  hollow  gallantry  in  place  of  courtesy,  ignorance 
and  pedantry — these  were  among  the  things  against 
which  the  authors  of  The  Tatler  and  The  Spectator 
set  their  faces  and  plied  their  ready  pens. 

And  there  is  abundant  testimony  of  their  success. 
The  poet,  John  Gay,  their  contemporary,^  in  his  Pres- 
ent  State  of  Wit  (May,  171 1),  said: 

"To  give  you  my  own  thoughts  of  this  gentleman's  [The 
Tatler' s']  writings,  I  shall  in  the  first  place  observe,  that  there 
is  this  noble  difference  between  him  and  all  the  rest  of  our 
polite  and  gallant  authors:  the  latter  have  endeavored  to 
please  the  age  by  falling  in  with  them,  and  encouraging  them 
in  their  fashionable  vices,  and  false  notions  of  things.  It 
would  have  been  a  jest  some  time  since,  for  a  man  to  have 

*  Dedicatory  Epistle  to  first  volume. 
'See  No.  271. 

'Number  i. 

*  Number  34. 

'  Author  of  Trivia,  in  praise  of  city  life,  and  of  The  Beggars* 
Opera. 


EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  23 

asserted  that  anything  witty  could  be  said  in  praise  of  a 
married  state;  or  that  devotion  and  virtue  were  any  neces- 
sary to  the  character  of  a  fine  gentleman.  Bickerstaff  ven- 
tured to  tell  the  town  that  they  were  a  parcel  of  fops,  fools, 
and  vain  coquettes;  but  in  such  a  manner,  as  even  pleased 
them,  and  made  them  more  than  half  inclined  to  believe  that 
he  spoke  truth. 

"Instead  of  complying  with  the  false  sentiments  or  vicious 
tastes  of  the  age,  either  in  morality,  criticism,  or  good  breed- 
ing; he  has  boldly  assured  them  that  they  were  altogether 
in  the  wrong,  and  commanded  them,  with  an  authority  which 
perfectly  well  became  him,  to  surrender  themselves  to  his 
arguments  for  virtue  and  good  sense. 

"It  is  incredible  to  conceive  the  effect  his  writings  have 
had  on  the  town;  how  many  thousand  follies  they  have 
either  quite  vanished,  or  given  a  very  great  check  to:  how 
much  countenance  they  have  added  to  virtue  and  religion; 
how  many  people  they  have  rendered  happy,  by  showing 
them  it  was  their  own  fault  if  they  were  not  so;  and  lastly, 
how  entirely  they  have  convinced  our  fops  and  young  fel- 
lows of  the  value  and  advantages  of  learning. 

"He  has  indeed  rescued  it  out  of  the  hands  of  pedants 
and  fools,  and  discovered  the  true  method  of  making  it  ami- 
able and  lovely  to  all  mankind.  In  the  dress  he  gives  it,  it 
is  the  most  welcome  guest  at  tea  tables  and  assemblies,  and 
is  relished  and  caressed  by  the  merchants  on  the  Change; 
accordingly,  there  is  not  a  lady  at  court,  nor  a  banker  in 
Lombard  Street,  who  is  not  verily  persuaded,  that  Captain 
Steele  is  the  greatest  scholar  and  best  casuist  of  any  man 
in  England. 

"Lastly,  his  writings  have  set  all  our  wits  and  men  of  let- 
ters upon  a  new  way  of  thinking,  of  which  they  had  little 
or  no  notion  before ;  and  though  we  cannot  yet  say  that  any 
of  them  have  come  up  to  the  beauties  of  the  original,  I 
think  we  may  venture  to  affirm,  that  every  one  of  them 


24  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

writes  and  thinks  much  more  justly  than  they  did  some  time 
since." 

And  Dr.  Johnson,  in  his  Life  of  AddisoUj  testifies: 

"The  Tatler  and  Spectator  .  ,  .  were  pubHshed  at  a  time 
when  two  parties,  loud,  restless,  and  violent,  each  with 
plausible  declarations,  and  each  perhaps  without  any  dis- 
tinct termination  of  its  views,  were  agitating  the  nation;  to 
minds  heated  with  political  contest,  they  supplied  cooler  and 
more  inoffensive  reflections;  and  it  is  said  by  Addison,  in  a 
subsequent  work,  that  they  had  a  perceptible  influence  upon 
the  conversation  of  that  time,  and  taught  the  frolic  and  the 
gay  to  unite  merriment  with  decency." 

The  method  and  the  purpose  of  these  essays  have 
alike  proved  native  to  the  essay  form.  Addison  and 
Steele  to  an  extent  barely  conceived  by  Bacon  brought 
the  essay  home  to  the  "business  and  bosoms  of  men." 
And  few  worthy  essays  since  their  day  have  lacked 
the  purpose  of  leading  men  pleasantly  into  saner 
thinking,  more  wholesome  living. 

The  most  striking  contribution  of  Steele  and  Addi- 
son to  the  essay,  however,  was  the  lasting  attractive- 
ness which  they  gave  it.  The  egotism  which  in  self- 
painting  by  lesser  men  than  Montaigne  would  have 
been  repellent,  is  deftly  made  by  Steele  and  Addison 
at  once  fictitious  and  amiable.  Not  even  the  very 
definite  and  usually  very  obvious  lesson  or  moral  at- 
tached to  each  essay  could  spoil  the  pleasing  effect 
of  the  buoyant  wit,  fancy,  and  good  sense  which  the 
essay  contained.  In  form  as  well  it  was  epoch- 
making.     In  these  essays  prose  became,  as  never  be- 


EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  25 

fore,  a  ready  and  obedient  instrument  with  a  charm 
distinctly  its  own. 

But  these  points  the  reader  may  and  should  develop 
from  the  essays  themselves,  from  the  actual  writings 
of  these  two  inventors  and  masterful  exponents  of 
the  periodical,  the  modern  essay. 

DR.  SAMUEL  JOHNSON   (1709-1784) 

Chronoloffy 
1709  Born,  September  18,  at  Lichfield,  son  of  a  book- 
seller.    Precocity.     Infirmities,  indolence. 
1728  Entered  Pembroke  College,  Oxford.    Translations. 
1735  Kept  school  at  Lichfield.    Garrick  a  pupil. 

1737  Went    with    Garrick    to    London.      Hack-writing. 

Grub  Street. 

1738  London,  imitation  of  a  Juvenal  satire. 
1744  Life  of  Savage. 

1747-1755  Dictionary.     Lord  Chesterfield  incident. 

1749  Vanity  of  Human  Wishes,  poem.    Irene,  tragedy. 

1 750- 1 752  The  Rambler.  1753-4,  Adventurer.  1758- 1760, 
Idler  papers.  Household  and  friends — Miss 
Williams,  Francis  Barbour,  the  Thrales. 

1755  M.A.  from  Oxford. 

1762  Pension  of  three  hundred  pounds. 

1763  Boswell  met  Johnson.    The  Club  organized. 
1765  LL.D.  from  Dublin.     Edition  of  Shakespeare. 
1775  LL.D.  from  Oxford.    Tour  of  the  Hebrides.    Con- 
versation.    Melancholy.    Illnesses. 

1784  Died,  December  13.     Buried  in  Westminster  Ab- 
bey. 
1 791  Life  of  Johnson,  by  James  Boswell. 

The  subject  of  Dr.  Johnson  is  a  large  one.  It  must 
be  treated  here  within  the  narrow  Hmits  imposed  by 


26  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

considering  him  as  an  essayist.  As  such  he  is  note- 
worthy, not  epoch-making. 

The  simple  facts  of  his  life  are  these :  He  was  bom 
September  i8,  1709,  the  son  of  a  bookseller  in  Lich- 
field. Poverty  pursued  him  well  into  his  middle  life, 
and  melancholy  and  indolence  always  beset  him.  His 
repulsive  appearance  and  manners,  moreover,  tended 
to  keep  people  away  from  him.  But  his  extraordinary 
knowledge  and  wisdom  and  his  skill  as  a  talker  at- 
tracted to  his  circle  the  finest  spirits  of  his  day. 

Johnson  attended  Pembroke  College  for  a  time 
and  later  succeeded  poorly  as  a  teacher  at  Lichfield. 
With  David  Garrick,  one  of  his  pupils,  he  went  to 
London  in  1737  and  found  a  residence  and  some  hack- 
writing  in  Grub  Street.  His  talents  and  his  produc- 
tions attracted  such  attention  from  the  booksellers  that 
ten  years  later  (1747)  he  was  entrusted  with  the  task 
of  compiling  a  comprehensive  English  dictionary,  a 
task  which  despite  his  indolence  he  completed  in  the 
incredibly  short  time  of  eight  years.  It  was  in  con- 
nection with  this  work  that  he  wrote  his  famous  letter 
to  Lord  Chesterfield,  the  great  gentleman  and  literary 
patron  of  the  day,  spurning  a  tardy  offer  of  assistance. 

Meanwhile  Johnson  attempted  periodical  essays 
after  the  manner  of  The  Spectator.  The  Rambler, 
208  numbers  entirely  from  his  own  pen,  his  numerous 
papers  in  Hawkesworth's  Adventurer,  and  a  series 
of  papers  in  Newbery's  The  Universal  Chronicle 
under  the  title  of  The  Idler,  all  appeared  between  1750 
and  1760,  and  together  firmly  established  Johnson's 
reputation  as  a  critic  and  a  moralist. 


EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  27 

His  Rasselas,  a  romance,  was  composed  in  the 
evenings  of  one  week  as  a  means  of  defraying  the 
expenses  of  his  mother's  funeral.  At  last,  in  1762,  a 
government  pension  placed  him  in  easy  circumstances 
for  life.  The  Club  which  he  established  the  next 
year,  with  Burke,  Reynolds,  Garrick,  and  Goldsmith 
among  its  original  nine  members,  is  as  famous  in  the 
history  of  real  life  as  the  Spectator  Club  in  the  realm 
of  fiction. 

Indolence  and  increasing  melancholy  combined  to 
check  his  literary  labors.  He  did  live  for  Boswell, 
however,  during  these  latter  years,  and  furnished  this 
matchless  biographer  with  material  for  his  great  work. 
On  December  13,  1784,  Johnson  died;  he,  like  Addi- 
son, was  buried  in  Westminster  Abbey. 

What  of  the  significance  of  Dr.  Johnson  as  an 
essayist?  Two  objects,  both  frankly  proclaimed  by 
Johnson  in  the  final  issue  of  The  Rambler,  each  pur- 
sued with  equal  consistency  in  his  other  essays,  he 
may  be  credited  with  attaining.  The  earlier  essayists 
by  their  use  of  English  prose  as  a  literary  medium 
had  caused  surprise;  Johnson  helped  greatly  to  give 
final  dignity  to  the  form;  he  removed  cause  for  sur- 
prise, and  established  English  prose  to  such  an  extent 
that  his  century  is  almost  barren  of  other  forms. 
Furthermore,  whereas  Steele  and  Addison  had  made 
wisdom  and  virtue  respectable,  Johnson  helped  to 
make  them  the  only  respectable  things  to  pursue. 

Each  of  these  contributions  to  the  development  of 
the  essay  deserves   further   consideration. 


28  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS       - 

"I  have  labored,"  wrote  Johnson,  "to  refine  our  language 
to  grammatical  purity,  and  to  clear  it  from  colloquial  bar- 
barisms, licentious  idioms,  and  irregular  combinations.  Some- 
thing, perhaps,  I  have  added  to  the  elegance  of  its  construc- 
tion and  something  to  the  harmony  of  its  cadence.  When 
common  words  were  less  pleasing  to  the  ear,  or  less  dis- 
tinct in  their  signification,  I  have  familiarized  the  terms  of 
philosophy  by  applying  them  to  popular  ideas,  but  have  rarely 
admitted  any  word  not  authorized  by  former  writers;  for 
I  believe  that  whoever  knows  the  English  tongue  in  its  pres- 
ent extent  will  be  able  to  express  his  thoughts  without 
further  help  from  other  nations." 

It  was  with  the  authority  of  the  scholarly  compiler 
of  a  great  English  dictionary  that  he  wrote. 

This  confidence  in  the  sufficiency  of  English,  par- 
ticularly of  English  prose,  was  far  from  universal. 
Although  no  writer  since  Bacon  had  consistently  pro- 
duced works  in  Latin  as  the  "universal  language," 
many  of  the  greater  writers  since  Milton  had  been 
skeptical  of  English  as  a  lasting  medium  and  had 
recommended  means  of  forestalling  its  degeneration 
and  decay.  Johnson's  confidence  in  English,  it  is 
true,  depended  partly  on  the  attempted  infusion  of 
Latinism  which  his  countrymen  never  fully  accepted.^ 
Johnson,  too,  it  must  be  said,  wavered  in  his  con- 
fidence when  at  Goldsmith's  death  in  1774  he  wrote 
Goldsmith's  Westminster  Abbey  epitaph  in  Latin ;  but 
it  is  significant  that  virtually  all  of  Johnson's  friends 
protested  against  this  disregard  of  the  claims  of  Eng- 
lish.   Dr.  Johnson  once  for  all  established  the  dignity 

*Yet  fictitious  characters  which  in  the  earlier  essays  were 
given  Latin  names,  were  in  his  later  essays  given  English  ones. 


EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  29 

of  the  English  prose  essay.  And  whereas  Steele  and 
Addison  had  employed  the  essay  form  fortuitously, 
able  writers  since  Johnson  have  trained  themselves  as 
deliberately  for  essay-writing  as  for  dramatic  or  po- 
etical composition. 

The  other  object  avowed  by  Dr.  Johnson  is  thus 
expressed  in  the  final  issue  of  The  Rambler: 

"I  have  seldom  descended  to  the  arts  by  which  favor  is 
obtained.  I  have  seen  the  meteors  of  fashion  rise  and  fall, 
without  any  attempt  to  add  a  moment  to  their  duration.  I 
have  never  complied  with  temporary  curiosity,  nor  enabled 
my  readers  to  discuss  the  topic  of  the  day;  I  have  rarely 
exemplified  my  assertions  by  living  characters;  in  my  papers 
no  man  could  look  for  censures  of  his  enemies  or  praises  of 
himself;  and  they  only  are  expected  to  peruse  them,  whose 
passions  left  them  leisure  for  abstracted  truth,  and  whom 
virtue  could  please  by  its  naked  dignity.  ...  I  shall  never 
envy  the  honors  which  wit  and  learning  obtain  in  any  other 
cause,  if  I  can  be  numbered  among  the  writers  who  have 
given  ardor  to  virtue,  and  confidence  to  truth." 

Such  boldness  and  integrity  would  have  awakened 
only  laughter  at  the  beginning  of  the  century.  It  is 
not  too  fantastic,  perhaps,  to  trace  the  influence  of 
Johnson's  stand  during  the  latter  eighteenth  century 
in  the  increasing  genuineness  and  justness  of  Hterary 
criticism,  in  the  growing  dissatisfaction  with  corrupt 
politics,  in  the  ever  greater  regard  for  the  simple,  the 
homely,  the  pure.  Without  some  such  change  the 
Elegy  Written  in  a  Country  Churchyard  would  hardly 
have  attracted  readers  of  Gay's  Trivia,  She  Stoops  to 
Conquer  the  spectators  of  The  Beggars'  Opera,  or 
The   Vicar  of   Wakefield  those  who  had   fed  upon 


30  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

Pamela  and  Tom  Jones.  The  Man  in  Black  would 
without  this  change  have  appeared  dull  beside  Sir 
Roger,  and  Beau  Tibbs  pallid  indeed  beside  Will 
Honeycomb. 

All  the  more  because  Johnson  is  not  widely  read, 
is  not  easy  for  most  people  to  read,  it  should  be  recog- 
nized that  of  the  qualities  possessed  by  the  great  essay- 
treasures  of  the  nineteenth  century,  two  are  in  great 
measure  contributed  by  him:  the  dignity  and  suffi- 
ciency of  the  English  prose  essay  as  a  type,  and  the 
pervading  and  uniform  exaltation  of  intellect  and  of 
soul. 

OLIVER   GOLDSMITH    (1728-1774) 
Chronology 
1728  Born,  November  10,  son  of  poor  rector,  Kilkenny 
West,  Ireland.    Thomas  Byrne.    Verses.    Small- 
pox. 
1744  Entered  Trinity  College,  Dublin.    B.A.,  1749.    Es- 
capades. 

1752  Edinburgh  University,  medicine. 

1753  To  Continent,  Leyden  University,  travels. 

1756  Returned  to  London.  Physician,  usher,  hack- 
writer. 

1759  Enquiry  into  Present  State  of  Polite  Learning  in 

Europe. 

1760  Chinese  Letters  in  Public  Ledger;   1762,  Citizen 

of  the  World.    Dr.  Johnson.    The  Club. 

1764  The  Traveller.  1766,  Vicar  of  Wakefield.  1767, 
Good-Natured  Man,  a  comedy.  1770,  Deserted 
Village.    1773,  She  Stoops  to  Conquer. 

1774  Retaliation — mock  epitaphs.  Worry  over  indebted- 
ness. Died,  April  4.  Latin  epitaph  in  West- 
minster Abbey. 


EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  31 

The  many  autobiographical  passages  in  Goldsmith's 
works,  together  with  Washington  Irving' s  Life  of 
Goldsmith,  have  made  him  almost  as  real  a  character 
as  Dr.  Johnson.  Like  Steele,  Addison,  and  Dr.  John- 
son, he  figures  in  nineteenth  century  historical  fiction. 
Notwithstanding  his  insignificant  form  and  homely 
features,  and  his  impecunious,  dallying,  rather  con- 
ceited nature,  his  hastily  constructed  writings  steadily 
attract  genuine  interest  and  uniform  praise.  Many  of 
the  facts  concerning  him  should  be  freshly  in  mind  for 
the  reader  of  his  essays. 

His  father  was  a  poor  rector  in  central  Ireland. 
There,  one  of  a  numerous  family,  Oliver  Goldsmith 
was  born,  November  10,  1728.  The  character  of  his 
father  is  portrayed  both  in  The  Man  in  Black  and  in 
the  Vicar  of  Wakefield.  His  surroundings  in  early 
life  are  reflected  in  The  Deserted  Village.  Under 
a  schoolmaster  named  Thomas  or  Paddy  Byrne,  he 
indulged  and  developed  his  natural  taste  for  tales  and 
verses.  It  was  in  childhood  that  he  was  disfigured 
by  smallpox.  His  school  days  in  various  towns  and 
his  college  days  in  Dublin  were  constantly  enlivened 
by  escapades  resulting  now  from  his  generosity,  now 
from  his  indolence  or  gullibility.  He  once  mistook 
a  private  house  for  an  inn,  after  the  fashion  descriSed 
in  She  Stoops  to  Conquer.  He  composed  ballads  and 
had  them  sung  in  the  streets  in  order  to  get  money. 
Trinity  College,  now  so  proud  of  him  as  her  son,  was 
compelled  by  the  vicissitudes  of  fate  to  discipline  him 
more  than  once. 

Receiving  his  A.B.  in  1749,  he  spent  three  years  in 


32  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

idleness  and  uncertainty  as  to  his  choice  of  a  pro- 
fession. The  tavern  scene  in  She  Stoops  to  Conquer 
doubtless  reproduces  some  of  his  experiences  during 
this  period.  At  length  he  went  to  Edinburgh,  in 
1752,  resolved  to  study  medicine.  The  next  year  he 
managed  to  secure  funds  for  prosecuting  his  studies 
on  the  Continent.  He  remained  but  a  short  time, 
however,  at  the  University  of  Ley  den  before  setting 
out  on  foot  upon  a  tour  of  Europe.  His  experiences 
on  this  journey  were  utilized  not  only  in  his  poem, 
The  Traveller,  but  also  in  George  Primrose's  account 
of  his  adventures  in  The  Vicar  of  Wakefield. 

In  1756,  penniless  and  unknown,  he  arrived  in 
London.  In  turn  he  tried,  both  in  vain,  the  profes- 
sion of  physician  and  the  occupation  of  usher,  or 
under-teacher,  in  a  school.  Finally  he  found  em- 
ployment as  a  hack-writer  with  Griffiths,  the  grasp- 
ing publisher  of  the  Monthly  Review,  and  was  in- 
auspiciously  launched  upon  his  career. 

An  independent  work  published  in  1759,  and  the 
appearance  the  next  year  in  the  Public  Ledger  of  his 
Chinese  Letters,  brought  him  a  somewhat  larger  in- 
come and  the  attention  of  literary  men.  He  came  to 
know  Dr.  Johnson,  and  was  one  of  the  original  mem- 
bers of  the  famous  Club. 

A  succession  of  productions,  each  dearly  cherished 
to-day,  and  each  quite  popular  in  his  day,  appeared 
during  the  next  fourteen  years.  During  the  same 
time  he  compiled  numerous  and  remunerative  works 
for  the  booksellers.  He  had  many  friends.  But  he 
spent  more  rapidly  than  he  earned.     And  when  the 


EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  33 

struggle  and  worry  made  him  ill,  he — whom  others 
had  all  along  refused  to  patronize  as  a  physician — 
insisted  upon  dosing  himself.  He  died,  April  4,  1774, 
at  the  age  of  only  forty-six. 

His  indebtedness  proved  to  be  so  disgracefully  large 
that  a  proposal  to  bury  him  in  Westminster  Abbey 
had  to  be  abandoned.  An  inscription,  written  (not- 
withstanding the  protests  of  Burke,  Reynolds,  and 
others)  in  Latin,  by  Dr.  Johnson,  was  nevertheless  set 
up  in  the  Abbey.     It  contains  the  pregnant  phrase: 

"Nullum  tetigit  quod  non  ornavit." 
"He  touched  nothing  which  he  did  not  adorn." 

Goldsmith's  Chinese  Letters  were  reprinted  as  The 
Citizen  of  the  World.  This  work  consists  of  one 
hundred  and  twenty-three  letters,  ostensibly  from  an 
educated  "Chinese"  or  Chinaman  sojourning  in  Eng- 
land. They  are  essays  as  distinctly  as  Steele's  Tatler 
papers.  The  fiction  in  them  is  rather  inconsistently 
maintained,  but  the  point  of  view  is  highly  illuminat- 
ing. The  Chinese  visits  many  of  the  places  which 
Bickerstaff,  the  Spectator,  the  Rambler,  and  others  had 
in  turn  visited.  And  from  every  place  and  incident 
he  derives  entertainment  and  profit.  In  humor  and 
kindliness,  and  for  the  most  part  in  realism,  his  letters 
surpass  the  lucubrations  and  meditations  of  them  all. 

Other  essays  of  Goldsmith's  are  contained  in  The 
Bee,  a  periodical  issued  from  October  6,  1759,  to 
November  24,  1759.  These  papers  are  as  varied  in 
subject-matter  and  in  treatment  as  those  of  The  Spec- 
tator  and  The  Rambler, 


34  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

Goldsmith  was  not  above  all  an  essayist.  He  and 
his  contemporaries  alike  doubtless  regarded  his  essays 
as  inferior  in  worth  to  his  poems,  his  comedies,  and 
his  novel.  He  is  an  essayist,  however,  who  may  well 
be  placed  at  the  head  of  those  who  set  out  merely  to 
follow  in  the  footsteps  of  Addison  and  Steele.  And 
as  Dr.  Johnson  contributed  to  the  development  of 
the  type  by  giving  it  breadth  and  sturdiness,  so  Gold- 
smith, as  his  essay-writings  will  show  to  the  reader, 
helped  to  perfect  and  establish  the  essay  by  giving  it 
complementary  qualities  of  grace,  intimacy  and  hu- 
manness. 

The  things  which  Steele  and  Addison,  Johnson,  and 
Goldsmith  as  essayists  did  well  were  done  either  as  well 
or  quite  indifferently  by  numerous  other  writers  of 
the  century.  (See  alphabetical  list  in  Appendix.) 
These  writers  added  little,  however,  to  the  essay  forms 
and  traditions.  The  essay  heritage  left  by  the  eight- 
eenth century  was  essentially  that  contributed  by 
Montaigne,  Bacon  and  Cowley,  and  by  the  four  great 
writers  of  the  periodical  essays:  Steele  and  Addison, 
Johnson,  and  Goldsmith.  These  men  prepared  the 
way  for  the  production  and  circulation  of  essays,  un- 
exampled in  number  and  variety,  among  the  ever- 
increasing  reading  public  of  the  nineteenth  century. 


III.     NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS- 
ENGLISH  AND  AMERICAN 

CHARLES   LAMB    (1775-1834) 
Chronology 
1775  Born,   February   10,   in   Crown   Office   Row,   The 

Temple,  London. 
1782-1789  Attended    Christ's    Hospital,    charity    school. 
1792  Appointed   clerk   in   South   Sea   House;    1795,   in 

East  India  Co. 
1796  Sister,    Mary,    in    fit    of    insanity,    killed    mother. 

Lamb  published  four  sonnets  in  book  of  verse 

mostly  by  Coleridge. 
1796-1820  Published   at   intervals   verse,  tales,   dramas, 

and  criticisms;  collected  Works  issued,  1818. 
1 820- 1 823  Elia  Essays  in  London  Magazine;  in  book 

form,  1823. 
1825  Retired    from   clerkship   on   pension. 

1833  Last  Essays  of  Elia,  book   form. 

1834  Death. 

(1847  Death  of  Mary.) 

TOURING  the  first  thirty  years  of  the  nineteenth 
-■-^century  an  inhabitant  of  the  section  of  London 
known  as  Islington  might  many  times  have  seen 
walking  toward  a  certain  institution  well  known  in  the 
neighborhood,  two  persons,  a  man  and  a  woman,  neatly 
and  simply  clothed  in  black,  both  weeping  bitterly; 
with  one  arm  the  man  supported  the  woman,  and 

35 


36  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

under  the  other  arm  he^  carried  a  strait- jacket.  It  was 
Mary  Lamb,  conscious  of  an  approaching  attack  of 
insanity,  being  conducted  to  the  madhouse  by  her 
brother  Charles.  On  the  22nd  of  September,  1796, 
in  the  first  of  her  paroxysms,  Charles  had  been  un- 
able to  wrest  a  knife  from  Mary's  hand  before  she 
had  murdered  their  mother.  He  had  subsequently 
secured  her  release  from  custody  by  promising  the 
civil  authorities  to  watch  over  her;  and  another  time 
had  now  come  when  she  must  be  placed  under  re- 
straint. 

This  somewhat  lurid  picture  needs  early  mention 
because  it  brings  into  proper  relief  the  charm,  the 
pathos,  and  the  heroism  of  Lamb's  writings.  Mary 
Lamb's  recurring  illness,  too,  was  not  the  only  en- 
couragement to  misanthropy  which  in  1800,  at  the 
age  of  twenty-five,  Charles  Lamb  had  to  withstand. 
He  was  under-sized.  He  was  afflicted  with  a  morti- 
fying stutter.  The  impecuniousness  of  his  father,  a 
humble  clerk  to  a  lawyer  in  the  Inner  Temple,  had 
compelled  Charles  to  leave  the  Blue  Coat  (charity) 
School  which  he  had  been  attending  and  to  accept  a 
position  in*  the  South  Sea  House,  later  a  similar  one 
with  the  East  India  Company,  where  he  earned  a 
small  salary  as  a  copyist  clerk.  He  had  met  Ann 
Simons  near  his  grandmother's  home  in  the  country 
and  had  loved  her;  it  was  more  than  a  passing  fancy, 
for  when  she  had  not  reciprocated  and  had  become 
Mrs.  Bartram  instead,  he  had  had  to  be  confined  for 
a  short  time  in  an  asylum  himself.  He  had  a  selfish 
brother  who  refused  to  shoulder  any  of  the  respoij^ 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  37 

sibilities  of  the  family.  Death  had  recently  robbed 
the  family  of  other  cherished  members  in  addition 
to  the  murdered  mother.  When  his  friend  Lloyd 
had  tried  to  cheer  Lamb  by  keeping  him  away  from 
Mary's  side,  Lamb  had  abruptly  broken  with  Lloyd. 
His  only  real  friend,  the  companion  of  his  school  -:; 
days,  the  poet  Coleridge,  was  a  long  journey  from  ^^: 
London.  ^ 

One  night  in  the  loneliness  of  his  lodgings,  as  he      -    ' 
awaited   the   temporary   oblivion  of   the '  next   day's 
drudgery,  he  put  out  of  sight  the  sonnets  and  the^ 
blank  verse  with  which  he  had  been  toying,  and  wroteil 

"Where  are  they  gone,  the  old  familiar  faces? 
I  had  a  mother,  but  she  died,  and  left  me. 
Died  prematurely  in  a  day  of  horrors — 
All,  all  are  gone,  the  old  familiar  faces. 

"I  have  had  playmates,  I  have  had  companions. 
In  my  days  of  childhood,  in  my  joyful  school-days — 
All,  all  are  gone,  the  old  familiar  faces. 

"I  have  been  laughing,  I  have  been  carousing, 
Drinking    late,    sitting   late,    with    my    bosom    cronies — 
All,  all  are  gone,  the  old  familiar  faces. 

"I  loved  a  love  once,  fairest  among  women. 
Closed  are  her  doors  on  me,  I  must  not  see  her — 
.     All,  all  are  gone,  the  old  familiar  faces. 

"I  have  a  friend,  a  kinder   friend  has  no  man. 
Like  an  ingrate,  I  left  my  friend  abruptly; 
Left  him,  to  muse  on  the  old  familiar  faces. 

"Ghost-like,    I    paced   round   the   haunts   of   my    childhood. 
Earth  seemed  a  desert  I  was  bound  to  traverse, 
Seeking  to  find  the  old  familiar  faces. 


38  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

"Friend  of  my  bosom,  thou  more  than  a  brother! 
Why  wert  not  thou  born  in  my  father's  dwelHng? 
So  might  we  talk  of  the  old  familiar  faces. 

"For  some  they  have  died,  and  some  they  have  left  me, 
And  some  they  have  taken  from  me;  all  are  departed; 
All,  all  are  gone,  the  old  famiHar  faces." 

And  yet  the  Lamb  of  this  broken-hearted  lamenta- 
tion is  not  the  Lamb  of  English  literature.  Misan- 
thropy, morbidity,  tragedy,  pathos  even — despite  the 
encouragement  to  each  which  his  life  furnished — are 
not  the  qualities  for  which  men  turn  and  turn  again 
to  the  Essays  of  Elia,  the  Letters,  and  the  other  works 
of  Charles  Lamb.  The  mood  which  expressed  itself 
in  a  sad  lament  was  a  rare  one  with  him.  What,  in 
1800,  during  the  hours  when  he  is  not  transcribing 
items  about  muslin,  cutlery,  and  calico,  is  he  ordinarily 
doing?  Well,  he  is  smoking,  for  one  thing;  like  most 
Englishmen  of  his  time,  he  is  also  drinking — some- 
thing hot  and  probably  rather  strong;  he  is  reading 
voraciously  and  lovingly  all  the  books  which  he  can 
afford  to  buy  containing  seventeenth  century  prose, 
poetry,  and  drama;  and  (perhaps  as  a  means  of  sup- 
plying tobacco,  toddy,  and  books)  he  is  writing  jokes 
for  the  newspapers! 

A  few  samples  of  the  labored  facetiousness  with 
which  in  1802  young  Lamb  held  at  bay  the  dogs  of 
loneliness  and  sorrow  will  not  be  out  of  place.  As 
Elia  in  his  Newspapers  Thirty-five  Years  Ago,  he 
explains  that  every  morning  paper  kept  an  author  to 
provide  daily  certain  witty  paragraphs  at  sixpence  a 
joke,  and  that  he  was  accustomed  to  rise  early  each 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  39 

morning  throughout  the  year,  "the  only  time  we 
could  spare  for  this  manufactory  of  jokes — our  sup- 
plementary livelihood,  that  supplied  us  in  every  want 
beyond  mere  bread  and  cheese." 

Referring  to  a  fashion  then  current  of  wearing 
pink  hose,  he  quotes  fondly  in  this  same  essay  one 
of  his  paragraphs  in  which 

"allusively  to  the  flight  of  Astrea — ultima  coelestium  terras 
reliquit—we  pronounced  .  .  .  that  MODESTY,^  TAKING 
HER  FINAL  LEAVE  OF  MORTALS,  HER  LAST 
BLUSH  WAS  VISIBLE  IN  HER  ASCENT  TO  THE 
HEAVENS  BY  THE  TRACT  OF  HER  GLOWING  IN- 
STEP." 

Mr.  E.  V.  Lucas,  Lamb's  modern  biographer,  has  dis- 
covered further  paragraphs  as  follows : 

"The  roseate  tint,  so  agreeably  diffused  through  the  silk 
stockings  of  our  females,  induces  the  belief  that  the  dye  is 
cast  for  their  lovers." 

"The  decline  of  red  stockings  is  as  fatal  to  the  wits,  as 
the  going  out  of  fashion  to  an  overstocked  jeweller;  some 
of  these  gentry  have  Hterally  for  some  months  past  fed  on 
roses." 

''Mr.  Monk  Lewis  was  so  much  hurt  by  his  fall,  that,  we 
are  told,  he  continued  for  some  minutes  senseless.  Very 
probable.'' 

"We  find  in  the  weekly  account  of  clerical  promotions 
that  the  Rev.  Mr.  Sheepshanks  succeeds  Dr.  Mereweather  in 
the  Rectory  of  Bleating." 

"A  bench  of  Justices  certainly  gives  us  an  idea  of  some- 
thing wooden.  Shakespeare,  in  his  seven  ages,  represents 
a  Justice  as  made  up  with  saws,  etc." 

"The  poets  have  always  been  lovers  of  good  liquor  from 


40  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

Anacreon  and  Ben  Jonson  downwards;  hence  they  are  some- 
times termed  in  derision  dram-atists." 

"Half  a  dozen  jests  a  day,"  says  Elia  further  in 
the  Newspapers  essay,  "why,  it  seems  nothing!  We 
make  twice  the  number  every  day  in  our  lives  as  a 
matter  of  course."  Lamb  did,  at  any  rate.  In  the 
gatherings  of  literary  people,  players,  wits,  and  eccen- 
tric individuals  at  the  Lambs' — including  Coleridge, 
De  Quinoey,  Wordsworth,  Hazlitt,  Hunt,  and  once 
even  Carlyle — Lamb  was  known  chiefly  as  a  maker  of 
small  jokes  and  puns.  De  Quincey  thus  describes  his 
method : 

"Lamb  said  little  except  when  an  opening  arose  for  a  pun. 
And  how  effectual  that  sort  of  small  shot  was  from  him 
I  need  not  say  to  anybody  who  remembers  his  infirmity  of 
stammering,  and  his  dexterous  management  of  it  for  pur- 
poses of  light  and  shade.  He  was  often  able  to  train  the 
roll  of  stammers  into  settling  upon  the  words  immediately 
preceding  the  effective  one;  by  which  means  the  keynote  of 
the  jest  or  sarcasm,  benefiting  by  the  sudden  liberation  of 
his  embargoed  voice,  was  delivered  with  the  force  of  a  pistol 
shot.  That  stammer  was  worth  an  annuity  to  him  as  an 
ally  of  his  wit.  Firing  under  cover  of  that  advantage,  he 
did  triple  execution;  for,  in  the  first  place,  the  distressing 
sympathy  of  the  hearers  with  his  distress  of  utterance  won 
for  him  the  silence  of  deep  attention;  and  then,  whilst  he 
had  us  all  hoaxed  into  this  attitude  of  mute  suspense  by  an 
appearance  of  distress  that  he  perhaps  did  not  really  feel, 
down  came  the  plunging  shot  into  the  very  thick  of  us,  with 
ten  times  the  effect  it  would  else  have  had." 

"M-martin,"  he  once  blurted  out  to  his  friend  Bur- 
ney  at  the  whist  table,  "if  d-dirt  were  trumps,  wh-what 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  41 

a  h-h-hand  you  would  hold."  In  introducing  his 
sister  to  Hood,  he  obviously  desired  to  turn  aside  any 
effusion  of  compliments:  "My  sister  Mary,"  he  said. 
"Allow  itte  to  introduce  my  sister  Mary;  she  is  a 
very  good  woman,  but  she  d-d-drinks !"  After  Words- 
worth had  been  expressing  some  rather  pompous,  non- 
adulatory  criticism  of  Shakespeare,  Lamb  burst  in 
with :  "Here's  Wordsworth,  he  says  he  could  have 
written  Hamlet  himself,  if  he  only  had  the  ni|m-mind  \" 
When  reference  was  made  to  the  fact  that  he  often 
went  late  to  his  work  at  the  South  Sea  House,  Lamb 
replied :  "True ;  but  I  always  make  up  for  it  by 
going  home  early."  "Charles,  did  you  ever  hear  me 
preach?"  Coleridge  once  said  to  him.  "I  never  heard 
you  do  anything  else,"  Lamb  answered.  In  recount- 
ing amidst  his  trials  the  many  blessings  which  he  en- 
joyed he  declared  that  "The  wind  is  tempered  to  the 
shorn  Lambs."  His  landlord,  so  he  said,  had  retired 
on  forty  pounds  a  year  and  one  anecdote. 

On  a  certain  occasion  when  he  had  dined  with  his 
physician,  he  had  been  carried  home  by  a  servant. 
Next  morning  he  wrote: 

"My  sister  has  begged  me  to  write  an  apology  to  Mrs.  A. 
and  you  for  disgracing  your  party.  Now,  it  does  seem  to 
me  that  I  had  rather  honored  your  party,  for  every  one  that 
was  not  drunk  (and  one  or  two  of  the  ladies,  I  am  sure, 
were  not)  must  have  been  set  off  greatly  in  contrast  to  me. 
I  was  the  scapegoat.  The  soberer  they  seemed.  .  .  .  But 
still  you  will  say  (or  the  men  and  maids  at  your  house  will 
say)  that  it  is  not  a  seemly  sight  for  an  old  gentleman  to 
go  home  pick-a-back.  Well,  maybe  it  is  not.  But  I  never 
studied  grace.     I  take  it  to  be  a  merely  superficial  accom- 


42  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

plishment.  I  regard  more  the  internal  acquisitions.  The 
great  object  after  supper  is  to  get  home,  and  whether  that 
is  obtained  in  a  horizontal  posture  or  perpendicular  (as 
foolish  men  and  apes  affect  for  dignity)  I  think  is  little  to 
the  purpose.  .  .  .  Here  I  am,  able  to  compose  a  sensible,  ra- 
tional apology,  and  what  signifies  how  I  got  here?" 

"Insuperable  proclivity  to  gin  in  poor  old  Lamb. 
His  talk  contemptibly  small,  indicating  wondrous  ig- 
norance aufd  shallowness,  even  when  it  was  serious  and 
good-mannered,  which  it  seldom  was,*'  with  only  "a 
most  slender  fiber  of  actual  worth  ...  in  that  poor 
Charles  ...  in  his  better  times  and  moods."  This 
was  what  gigantic,  serious,  thundering  Carlyle  thought 
of  Lamb — "a  nondescript  and  harmlessly  useless"  sort 
of  genius.  Hazlitt,  who  knew  Lamb  better  and  whose 
world-spectacles  were  in  general  more  carefully 
polished,  imputed  Lamb's  puns  and  light  talk  to  his 
humility  and  his  desire  to  be  agreeable :  "Lamb  often 
had  wiser  things  to  say  than  he  would  utter,  but,  fear- 
ing perhaps  that  he  might  go  beyond  the  apprehension 
of  certain  of  the  company  and  make  them  uncom- 
fortable, he  preferred  to  maintain  a  lower  and  friend- 
lier level  by  indulging  in  nonsense."  Doubtless  it  was 
as  Professor  Winchester  says:  "Just  because  life  was 
to  him  so  serious  a  matter,  he  took  delight  in  up- 
setting those  people  who  are  always  mistaking  stupid- 
ity for  seriousness  and  dulness  for  dignity."  ^ 

Such  in  brief  was  the  life,  and  such  the  spirit  of 
Charles  Lamb:  to  those  who  did  not  or  could  not 

*C.  T.  Winchester:  A  Group  of  English  Essayists,  New 
York,  1910. 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  43 

know  him,  something  of  a  bufifoon,  something  even  of 
an  imbecile;  to  those,  on  the  other  hand,  who  knew 
him  well,  in  a  high  and  difficult  sense  heroic.  The 
most  intimate  revelations  of  his  life,  written  in  its 
ripest  period,  are  what  one  reads  in  the  Essays  of  Elia. 
Before  opening  a  copy  of  them,  fix  vividly  in  mind  a 
picture  of  the  author.  Think  of  him  proceeding  daily 
to  his  high  stool  and  his  pen,  those  certain  providers 
of  bread  and  cheese,  at  the  South  Sea  House  or  the 
East  India  Company's  offices;  think  of  him  returning 
at  night  to  his  simple  home  and  his  loving  sister  to 
enjoy  a  smoky,  bibulous,  jolly  evening  with  his  friends. 
Think  of  him  contriving  from  time  to  time  to  compose 
an  Elia  essay — now  an  extended  pun  like  April  Fools' 
Day,  now  an  effusion  like  the  Roast  Pig  dissertation. 
Think  of  him  in  franker  moments  writing  such  a 
heart-piercing  reverie  as  Dream-Children,  where  he 
describes  how  his  little  ones,  little  Alice  and  sturdy 
John,  had  crept  about  him  one  evening  to  hear  stories 
about  their  elders,  and  how,  after  telling  them  of  their 
grandmother  and  of  his  own  boyhood,  he  had  con- 
tinued : 

"Then  I  told  them  how  for  seven  long  years,  in  hope  some- 
times, sometimes  in  despair,  yet  persisting  ever,  I  courted  the 
fair  Alice  W n;  and,  as  much  as  children  could  under- 
stand, I  explained  to  them  what  coyness,  and  difficulty,  and 
denial  meant  in  maidens — when  suddenly,  turning  to  Alice, 
the  soul  of  the  first  Alice  looked  out  at  her  eyes  with  such 
a  reality  of  re-presentment,  that  I  became  in  doubt  which  of 
them  stood  there  before  me,  or  whose  that  bright  hair  was; 
and  while  I  stood  gazing,  both  the  children  gradually  grew 
fainter  to  my  view,  receding,  and  still  receding  till  nothing 


44  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

at  last  but  two  mournful  features  were  seen  in  the  utter- 
most distance,  which,  without  speech,  strangely  impressed 
upon  me  the  effects  of  speech:  *We  are  not  of  Alice,  nor 
of  thee,  nor  are  we  children  at  all.  The  children  of  Alice 
called  Bartrum  father.  We  are  nothing,  less  than  nothing, 
and  dreams.  We  are  only  what  might  have  been,  and  must 
wait  upon  the  tedious  shores  of  Lethe  millions  of  ages  be- 
fore we  have  existence,  and  a  name' — and  immediately 
awaking,  I  found  myself  quietly  seated  in  my  bachelor  arm- 
chair, where  I  had  fallen  asleep,  with  the  faithful  Bridget 
unchanged  by  my  side.  .  .  ." 

Think  also  of  Lamb  saving,  in  excess  of  what  to- 
bacco and  gin  and  frequent  entertaining  must  have 
cost,  two  thousand  pounds  sterling  as  a  legacy  for 
Mary  and  a  support  in  her  old  age.  Think  of  him  in 
person  as  he  is  described  by  Carlyle,  who,  notwith- 
standing his  bruskness  and  his  squinting  vision,  has 
left  us  the  most  lifelike  and,  in  its  essence,  the  most 
appreciative  picture  of  Charles  Lamb : 

"He  was  the  leanest  of  mankind,  tiny  black  breeches  but- 
toned to  the  knee-cap  and  no  farther,  surmounting  spindle- 
legs  also  in  black,  face  and  head  fineish,  black,  bony,  lean, 
and  of  a  Jew  type  rather;  in  the  eyes  a  kind  of  smoky  bright- 
ness or  confused  sharpness;  spoke  with  a  stutter;  in  walking 
tottered  and  shuffled :  emblem  of  imbecility  bodily  and  spirit- 
ual (something  of  real  insanity  I  have  understood),  and 
yet  something  too  of  humane,  ingenuous,  pathetic,  sportfully 
much-enduring." 

Finally,  modify  this  picture  to  the  extent  suggested 
by  Mr.  Augustine  Birrell : 

"One  grows  sick  of  the  expressions,  'poor  Charles  Lamb,* 
'gentle  Charles  Lamb,'  as  if  he  were  one  of  those  grown-up 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  45 

children  of  the  Leigh  Hunt  type,  who  are  perpetually  beg- 
ging and  borrowing  through  the  round  of  every  man's  ac- 
quaintance. Charles  Lamb  earned  his  own  living,  paid  his 
own  way,  was  the  helper,  not  the  helped;  a  man  who  was 
beholden  to  no  one,  who  always  came  with  gifts  in  his  hand, 
a  shrewd  man,  capable  of  advice,  strong  in  council.  Poor 
Lamb,  indeed!  Poor  Coleridge,  robbed  of  his  will;  poor 
Wordsworth,  devoured  by  his  own  ego;  poor  Southey, 
writing  his  tomes  and  deeming  himself  a  classic;  poor  Car- 
lyle,  with  his  nine  volumes  of  memoirs,  where  he 

'Lies  like  a  hedgehog  rolled  up  the  wrong  way, 
Tormenting  himself  with  his  prickles' — 

Call  these  men  poor,  if  you  feel  it  decent  to  do  so,  but  not 
Lamb,  who  was  rich  in  all  that  makes  life  valuable  or  mem- 
ory sweet." 

Then  pick  up  your  copy  of  Lamb's  essays,  and  read. 


WILLIAM   HAZLITT    (1778-1830) 
Chronology 

1778  Born  at  Maidstone,  Kent,  son  of  Presbyterian  min- 
ister. 

1783-1786  With  family  in  America — Philadelphia,  Wey- 
mouth. 

1794  Controversial  letters,  political,  ethical. 

1798  Visit  of  Coleridge.  Hazlitt  visited  Coleridge  and 
met  Wordsworth.  Home  reading  and  study. 
Painting — portraits  of  Coleridge,  Wordsworth, 
Lamb. 

1806  Principles  of  Human  Action,  "an  Argument  in 
defense  of  the  Natural  Disinterestedness  of  the 
Human  Mind." 

1812  Parliamentary  newspaper  reporter;  theatrical 
critic;  quarrel  with  editor. 


46  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

1817  Round  Table  essays  in  Hunt's  Examiner.  Quar- 
rel with  the  Lambs.  Characters  of  Shakespeare's 
Plays.  Quarrel  with  Gifford  of  the  Quarterly 
Review.    Lectures,  books. 

1 819  Table  Talk  in  London  Magazine.  Quarrels  with 
Hunt,  Coleridge,  Southey,  Wordsworth. 

1825  Spirit  of  the  Age   (critical  estimates  of  contem- 

poraries). 

1826  Plain  Speaker.     1827,  Life  of  Napoleon. 
1830  Died,  September  18. 

It  is  not  particularly  difficult  to  regard  Charles 
Lamb  as  a  hero;  there  is  so  much  that  is  thrillingly 
virile  in  his  life  that  that  "proclivity  to  gin,''  that 
never-ceasing  levity,  and  those  horrible  puns  constitute 
blemishes  at  once  amiable  and  insignificant.  It  is 
harder  to  erect  a  pedestal  for  William  Hazlitt.  It 
does  not  predispose  us  in  his  favor  to  learn,  as  facts 
compel  us  to  learn  of  Hazlitt,  that  he  was  suspicious 
and  quarrelsome  with  respect  to  his  friends;  that  he 
was  bitterly,  almost  vulgarly,  vituperative  toward  his 
enemies;  that  he  was  heartless,  even  inhuman,  in  his 
love  affairs;  and  that  his  bigotry,  in  politics  and  re- 
ligion alike,  was  almost  incredible — he  boasted  that 
he  had  never  read  a  book  through  after  he  was  thirty. 

And  yet  Carlyle,  always  so  sparing  with  his  praise, 
called  Hazlitt  "a  man  recognizably  of  fine  natural 
talents  and  aspirations" ;  Robert  Louis  Stevenson  con- 
fessed himself  an  ardent  "Hazlittite,"  and  considered 
Hazlitt  the  most  improperly  neglected  of  English 
writers;  Walter  Bagehot  actually  preferred  Hazlitt 
to  Lamb ;  and  Charles  Lamb  himself  wrote  of  Hazlitt 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  47 

in  the  London  Magazine  this  qualified  yet  practically 
unsparing  praise:  "But  protesting  against  much  that 
he  has  written  and  some  things  which  he  chooses  to 
do;  judging  him  by  his  conversation,  which  I  enjoyed 
so  long  and  relished  so  deeply,  or  by  his  books,  in 
those  places  where  no  clouding  passion  intervenes,  I 
should  belie  my  own  conscience  if  I  said  less  than 
that  I  think  W.  H.  to  be  in  his  natural  and  healthy 
state  one  of  the  wisest  and  finest  spirits  breathing.  .  .  . 
I  think  I  shall  go  to  my  grave  without  finding,  or  ex- 
pecting to  find,  such  another  companion." 

These  opinions  are  enough  to  create  for  William 
Hazlitt  a  niche  well  above  the  group  of  authors  who 
are  merely  notable.  They  serve,  moreover,  to  convert 
one's  study  of  his  life  from  what  would  otherwise  be 
a  search  for  scandalous  and  putrid  morsels,  into  a 
discriminating  scrutiny  of  those  things  which  kept  him 
from  being  more  heroic  than  he  was,  and  of  those 
other  things  which  notwithstanding  inheritance  and 
environment  and  innate  perversity  made  him  truly 
memorable. 

For  some  of  the  influences  which  made  Hazlitt  un- 
healthy and  unheroic,  we  must  look  to  the  times  into 
which  he  was  born.  The  eighteenth  century  was 
dominated  by  a  spirit  of  conformity.  In  religion  the 
emphasis  was  upon  the  doctrines  of  the  Established 
Church,  at  least  upon  the  beliefs  which  had  been 
handed  down  and  which  for  that  reason  had  a  final 
claim  upon  men's  faith.  Dr.  Samuel  Johnson  exer- 
cised his  great  intellect  not  in  critically  examining 


48  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

these  doctrines  but  in  compelling  himself  to  adopt 
them.  In  criticism,  the  effort  was  constantly  to  es- 
tablish final  criteria,  and  it  was  customary  to  regard 
works  which  did  not  conform  to  recognized  criteria 
as  ipso  facto  damned  to  contempt  and  oblivion.  In 
politics,  also,  established  principles  were  the  prime 
things  to  be  sought  and  to  be  regarded :  Burke  would 
probably  not  have  favored  the  American  Colonies  as 
he  did»  had  not  his  view  been  dictated  by  precedent; 
and  when  Burke  could  find  nothing  in  his  principles 
or  his  knowledge  of  the  past  to  explain  the  French 
Revolution,  he  maintained  that  it  was  absolutely  with- 
out justification,  altogether  misdirected  and  inexcus- 
able, and  he  recognized  in  the  treatment  of  King 
Louis  and  Queen  Marie  Antoinette  only  the  height 
of  tragedy,  pathos,  and  unchivalry. 

Before  Hazlitt  was  born,  a  reaction  had  set  in  which 
continued  during  all  his  early  life.  The  preaching  of 
the  two  Wesleys  compelled  many  people  to  recognize 
that  religion  included  far  more  than  the  acceptance 
of  articles  and  the  observance  of  forms.  Benjamin 
Franklin  had  dared  to  think  about  such  matters  for 
himself,  and  to  let  others  know  that  he  did  so.  In 
literature,  Robert  Burns  sang  songs  which  notwith- 
standing theory  and  criteria  and  learned  discussion 
as  to  what  ought  to  be,  made  men  listen  to  what  was. 
Wordsworth  and  Coleridge  promptly  followed  with 
theories  and  productions  which  must  have  made  Dry- 
den  and  Gray  and  Dr.  Johnson  turn  uneasily  in  their 
graves.  Even  in  politics,  although  the  excesses  of  the 
Revolutionists  in  France  and  the  animosity  necessarily 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  49 

occasioned  by  the  successful  rebellion  in  America  only 
confirmed  multitudes  of  reactionaries  in  their  opinions 
— even  in  politics,  there  were  not  a  few  who  welcomed 
the  new  as  good,  and,  regardless  of  what  they  thought 
to  be  false  patriotism,  sympathized  openly  with  the 
Colonies  and  rejoiced  in  the  French  Revolution. 

In  the  family  of  one  of  the  most  ardent  of  these 
progressives,  a  son,  William  Hazlitt,  was  born  in  1778. 
His  father  had  been  educated  as  a  Presbyterian  min- 
ister :  he  was  something  of  a  Dissenter  to  begin  with. 
But  he  had  dissented  even  from  that  denomination, 
and  had  joined  what  was  then  the  small  and  despised 
sect  of  the  Unitarians.  He  had  often  met  and  con- 
versed with  Dr.  Benjamin  Franklin,  then  on  important 
missions  from  the  Colonies  to  the  mother  country. 
And  when  times  were  not  prosperous  in  his  small 
Unitarian  church,  he  came,  in  1783,  to  America.  If 
the  new  nation  had  proved  as  unconventional  in  re- 
ligion as  it  had  proved  in  politics,  Hazlitt  would  doubt- 
less be  to-day  regarded  as  an  insignificant  or  an  hon- 
ored American  author.  But  Philadelphia,  where  the 
family  first  settled,  was  too  orthodox  to  pay  much  at- 
tention to  this  intellectual  rebel,  Hazlitt's  father ;  later 
Boston,  although  it  proved  more  hospitable  and  al- 
lowed Mr.  Hazlitt  to  walk  in  from  his  temporary  home 
in  Weymouth  and  found  the  first  Unitarian  society 
in  Boston,  could  not  provide  him  with  a  decent  liv- 
ing; and  in  1786  the  Hazlitt  family  returned  to  a 
Unitarian  parish  in  Wem,  Shropshire,  where  condi- 
tions were  meager  but  endurable.    And  there,  in  an 


so  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

atmosphere  of  religious  and  political  dissent,  Hazlitl 
grew  up. 

Carlyle  attributed  Hazlitt*s  ill-success  in  the  con- 
duct of  his  life  to  his  lack  of  "sound  culture."  Prob- 
ably Carlyle  felt  that  the  studies  Hazlitt  had  prose- 
cuted under  his  father's  guidance  and  at  his  own  sweet 
will  there  in  Wem,  although  persistent  indeed,  were 
desultory  and  ill-balanced.  For,  intending  his  son  to 
become  a  Unitarian  minister,  the  elder  Hazlitt  di- 
rected him  in  a  vast  amount  of  theological  and  con- 
troversial reading.  And  of  his  own  accord  Hazlitt 
read  assiduously  and  repeatedly  from  Burke,  Junius, 
Rousseau,  Fielding,  Richardson,  Smollett,  Shake- 
speare, and  Boccaccio.  The  only  immediate  result 
was  that  gradually  he  crystallized  his  opinions,  usually 
unconventional  ones,  on  this  subject  and  on  that. 
Certain  controversial  letters  written  by  him  were  pub- 
lished before  he  was  sixteen.  He  watched  with  ad- 
miration the  progress  of  the  French  Revolution,  and 
noted  rapturously  the  rise  and  the  triumphal  course 
of  Napoleon. 

In  1796,  Coleridge  came  to  preach  at  Wem.  His 
sermon  and  his  conversation  at  the  Hazlitt  home  and 
on  the  walks  which  he  condescendingly  took  with 
William,  startled  the  young  thinker  in  his  contem- 
plative inactivity.  Hazlitt  began  to  feel  that  his 
thoughts  might  be  worth  something,  and  that  he  too 
might  some  day  write  things  which  men  would  gladly 
read  and  act  upon.  He  visited  Coleridge  later  in  the 
Lake  Country,  and  there  met  Wordsworth.  It  was 
somewhat  as  if  a  youthful  student  of  to-day  should 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  Si 

by  some  combination  of  circumstances  become  the 
intimate  companion  for  three  or  four  weeks  of  Mr. 
Edwin  Arlington  Robinson  and  Mr.  Alfred  Noyes. 
Hazlitt  wanted  to  write ;  thoughts  surged  in  his  mind ; 
but  his  stubborn  pen  would  not  express  them.  Still 
he  studied,  the  works  of  his  old  author-friends,  the 
poetry  of  Coleridge  and  Wordsworth,  his  empirical 
theories  of  justice  and  human  conduct;  he  ac- 
cumulated that  store  of  knowledge  and  experience 
which  was  to  flow  so  freely  in  later  years,  but  which 
as  yet  would  not  be  organized  upon  any  set  theme. 
In  one  place  he  speaks  of  these  days  as  the  saddest 
of  his  life,  in  another  place  as  the  happiest. 

At  last  he  gave  up  thoughts  of  being  a  man  of 
letters,  and  undertook  to  develop  another  taste  which 
he  had  long  exhibited.  His  older  brother,  John,  was 
a  miniature-painter.  William  began  to  take  lessons 
in  painting.  At  length  he  secured  orders  for  copies 
of  certain  pictures  in  the  Louvre,  and  spent  several 
months  in  1802- 1803  in  Paris  filling  them.  He  re- 
turned to  England  as  a  portrait-painter;  of  his  works 
the  most  important  is  a  picture  of  Giarles  Lamb  which 
is  in  the  National  Gallery  in  London.  But  it  was  his 
ambition  to  depict  character  as  accurately  and  as 
artistically  as  Rembrandt,  and  his  prompt  and  frank 
recognition  that  his  limited  talents  made  this  impossi- 
ble is  surely  to  his  credit.  In  1805  he  abandoned  the 
profession. 

He  had  already  met  Charles  Lamb  and  other  liter- 
ary men  in  London.  These  and  other  experiences 
seem  to  have  partly  unshackled  his  pen,  for  in  1806 


52  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

his  first  book,  containing  his  long-contemplated  philo- 
sophical scheme,  appeared.  It  met  with  no  success. 
It  did  bring  him  some  hack  work  from  the  London 
publishers.  He  had  had  various  love  affairs  since 
his  first  departure  from  Wem;  these  now,  in  1808, 
culminated  in  his  wedding  with  a  Miss  Stoddart,  a 
friend  of  the  Lambs.  In  18 12,  after  a  period  of  com- 
parative inactivity,  reflected  in  his  later  works  through 
accounts  of  strolls  in  the  woods  near  his  cottage  at 
Winterslow,  he  moved  with  his  family  to  London, 
determined  to  make  his  living  there  as  a  literary  man. 

He  became  Parliamentary  reporter  for  the  Morn- 
ing Chronicle,  acquired  from  his  associates  the  habit  of 
drinking  to  excess,  came  to  his  senses,  and  foreswore 
liquor  forever.  He  became  a  theatrical  critic.  He 
quarreled — ^as  he  was  soon  to  quarrel  with  the  friends 
whom  he  should  have  cherished  most — with  the  editor 
of  the  paper,  and  resigned  his  position. 

At  last  he  was  to  strike  his  best  vein.  Leigh  Hunt 
conceived  the  idea  of  conducting  a  paper  which  should 
contain  essays  in  the  manner  of  The  Spectator;  differ- 
ent writers  were  to  contribute,  and  the  series  was 
to  be  known  as  the  Round  Table.  Just  as  the  under- 
taking was  launched,  however,  the  renewed  activity  of 
Bonaparte,  whose  defeat  at  Waterloo  had  chagrined 
and  embittered  Hazlitt,  spread  consternation  in  Lon- 
don ;  and  Hazlitt  wrote  all  of  the  Round  Table  papers 
which  were  published,  except  a  few  by  Hunt  himself. 
The  choice  accumulations  of  years  here  found  their 
proper  outlet. 

Hazlitt  admired  Montaigne  for  his  "courage  to  say 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  53 

as  an  author  what  he  felt  as  a  man."  Hazlitt  always 
had  an  opinion — favorable  almost  as  frequently  as  ad- 
verse; and  he  proved  to  be  neither  priggish  nor  in- 
sipid in  stating  his  opinions.  He  allowed  to  appear 
not  only  the  admirations  which  he  had  long  cherished 
for  certain  authors  and  certain  painters,  but  also  his 
political  and  his  religious  principles  and  animosities. 
To  have  been  more  tactful,  less  frank  and  outspoken, 
would  to  his  mind  have  been  to  desert  his  principles, 
his  conscience. 

One  effect  was  that  he  was  attacked  by  the  staunch 
Tory,  Gifford,  who  edited  the  Quarterly  Review.  A 
sample  of  Gifford's  criticism  will  be  enlightening  here : 

"We  are  far  from  intending  to  write  a  single  word  in 
answer  to  this  loathsome  trash  .  .  .  but  if  the  creature  in 
his  endeavor  to  crawl  into  the  light  must  take  his  way  over 
the  tombs  of  illustrious  men,  disfiguring  the  records  of  their 
greatness  with  the  slime  and  filth  which  marks  his  track,  it 
is  right  to  point  out  to  him  that  he  may  be  flung  back  to  the 
situation  in  which  Nature  designed  that  he  should  grovel." 

Hazlitt  nourished  his  resentment  in  silence  until  after 
the  appearance  of  his  next  work.  Characters  of  Shake- 
speare's Plays,  the  ready  sale  of  which  was  suddenly 
checked  by  another  foul  attack  from  Gifford.  Hazlitt 
then  prepared  and  published  a  Letter  to  William  Gif- 
ford, Esq.,  which  for  virulence  and  force,  if  not  for 
conciseness  and  dignity,  may  be  compared  to  Dr. 
Johnson's  famous  letter  to  Lord  Chesterfield.  It 
begins : 

"Sir, — You  have  an  ugly  trick  of  saying  what  is  not  true 
of  any  one  you  do  not  like;  and  it  will  be  the  object  of  this 


54  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

letter  to  cure  you  of  it.  You  say  what  you  please  of  others : 
it  is  time  you  were  told  what  you  are.  In  doing  this,  give 
me  leave  to  borrow  the  familiarity  of  your  style: — for  the 
fidelity  of  the  picture  I  shall  be  answerable. 

"You  are  a  little  person,  but  a  considerable  cat's-paw; 
and  so  far  worthy  of  notice." 

One  of  Hazlitt's  essays  is  entitled  The  Pleasures 
of  Hating;  and  surely  no  man  to  whom  hatred  was 
not  a  joy  could  have  contracted  or  have  cherished 
so  many  enmities  as  this  man.  He  quarreled  with 
Lamb;  he  fought  with  all  critics  like  Gifford  who  at- 
tacked him  or  the  objects  of  his  admiration,  consider- 
ing each  not  merely  mistaken  or  misinformed,  but 
deliberately  blind,  maliciously  mendacious,  altogether 
contemptible.  His  criticisms  of  Shelley,  whom  he 
could  not  endure,  in  Table  Talk,  caused  a  breach  with 
Leigh  Hunt.  He  also  made  bitter  attacks  upon  Cole- 
ridge, Southey,  and  Wordsworth. 

The  rosebushes  of  his  essays  are  well  supplied  with 
thorns.  Observe  this  footnote  to  an  account  of  old 
English  writers: 

"A  splendid  edition  of  Goldsmith  has  been  lately  got  up 
under  the  superintendance  of  Mr.  Washington  Irvine,  with 
a  preface  and  a  portrait  of  each  author.  By  what  con- 
catenation of  ideas  that  gentleman  arrived  at  the  necessity  of 
placing  his  own  portrait  before  a  collection  of  Goldsmith's 
works,  one  must  have  been  early  imprisoned  in  transatlantic 
solitudes  to  understand." 

Here  are  some  more  of  his  barbed  thrusts: 

"This  last-mentioned  player  is  at  present  the  keeper  of  the 
Fives-court,  and  we  might  recommend  to  him  for  a  motto 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  55 

over  his  door,  'who  enters  here,  forgets  himself,  his  country, 
and  his  friends.'  And  the  best  of  it  is,  that  by  the  calcula- 
tion of  the  odds,  none  of  the  three  are  worth  remembering!" 

"Now  Cavanaugh  [a  celebrated  Fives  player]  was  as 
good-looking  a  man  as  the  Noble  Lord  and  much  better  look- 
ing than  the  Right  Hon.  Secretary.  He  had  a  clear,  open 
countenance,  and  did  not  look  sideways  or  down,  like  Mr. 
Murray,  the  bookseller." 

"A  rich  man  is  not  a  great  man,  except  to  his  dependants 
and  his  steward.  A  lord  is  a  great  man  in  the  idea  we  have 
of  his  ancestry,  and  probably  of  himself,  if  we  know  nothing 
of  him  but  his  title." 

"If  we  wish  to  know  the  force  of  human  genius  we  should 
read  Shakespeare.  If  we  wish  to  see  the  insignificance  of 
human  learning  we  may  study  his  commentators." 

If  he  did  not  quarrel  with  his  wife,  he  did  exhibit 
gross  indifference  toward  her,  and  that  from  the  stand- 
point of  each  must  have  been  worse  than  quarreling; 
after  1819  they  lived  apart.  By  1822  he  had  become 
infatuated  with  the  daughter  of  his  landlord,  a  Miss 
Walker;  and  he  and  Mrs.  Hazlitt  went  together  to 
Scotland,  where  divorce  seemed  to  be  more  easily  ob- 
tainable than  in  England.  On  his  return  to  London, 
a  single  man,  as  he  thought,  Hazlitt  found  Miss  Walker 
about  to  be  married  to  a  man  of  her  own  station.  He 
threw  off  a  naked  account  of  his  passion  for  her, 
published  it,  forgot  her,  and  two  years  later  married 
a  Mrs.  Bridge  water,  of  whom  we  know  simply  that 
she  had  three  hundred  pounds  a  year.  When  she 
discovered  shortly  afterward,  while  Hazlitt  was  tour- 


S6  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

ing  the  Continent  (on  her  money),  that  their  marriage 
was  after  all  bigamous,  the  Scotch  divorce  not  being 
really  legal,  she  refused  to  return  to  Hazlitt,  and  he 
never  saw  her  again. 

Yet  this  bright,  quarrelsome,  fickle  man,  on  his 
deathbed  in  1830,  waiting  for  the  fifty  pounds  which 
he  had  requested  Jeffrey  to  send  him  for  medicine, 
gruel,  and  nurse's  fees — this  man,  rich  only  in  friends 
who,  like  Charles  Lamb,  would  not  remain  estranged 
from  him,  says  what  of  himself  in  his  last  moments? 

"Well,  I  have  lived  a  happy  life!" 

There  is  every  reason  to  believe  that  he  was  not  de- 
lirious when  he  said  it. 

To  understand  that  remark  we  must  turn  away 
from  his  life,  agreeing  here  with  Carlyle  when  he  says 
"Poor  Hazlitt!"  We  must  turn  to  his  miscellaneous 
writings — not  to  the  unfortunate  Life  of  Napoleon, 
which  could  not  have  displaced  in  popular  favor  the 
one  that  had  just  been  published  by  Sir  Walter  Scott, 
and  which,  moreover,  made  a  hero  of  the  man  with 
whose  name  English  mothers  had  long  been  fright- 
ening their  children  into  obedience;  we  must  turn 
not  to  the  scurrilous  Gifford  attacks,  not  to  the  pseudo- 
philosophical  and  "scrupulously  dry"  treatise  on  Hu- 
man Action:  but  to  the  intimate,  reflective,  self -re- 
vealing, eloquent  effusions  of  the  Round  Table,  Table 
Talk,  and  the  Plain  Speaker.  Sauntering  in  these 
fragrant  and  luxuriant  gardens,  we  shall  see  why 
Stevenson  kept  Hazlitt  always  beside  him,  why  Haz- 
litt is  called  the  most  eloquent  of  essayists,  why  so 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  57 

intelligent  a  man  as  Walter  Bagehot  could  prefer 
Hazlitt  even  to  Lamb,  and  why  Charles  Lamb  could 
say  of  Hazlitt  that  "in  his  natural  and  healthy  state" 

he  was  "one  of  the  wisest  and  finest  spirits  breath- 

•   „  ft 
mg. 

WASHINGTON  IRVING   (1783-1859) 
Chronology 
1783  Born,  April  3,  New  York. 
1802  Jonathan  Oldstyle  Papers  in  local  newspaper. 
1 804- 1 806  First  European  trip,  health  and  pleasure^ 
1806  Salmagundi. 
1809  Knickerbocker  History  of  New  York.     Death  of 

his  fiancee,  Miss  Hoffman. 
1815-1832  Second  European  sojourn;  business,  literature. 
1 819  The  Sketch  Book.     1822,  Bracebridge  Hall.     1824, 

Tales  of  a  Traveller.     1828,  Life  of  Columbus. 
1833  Sunnyside  purchased. 
1842  Visit  of  Charles  Dickens. 
1842-1846  Minister  to   Spain. 

1855  Wolfert's  Roost.     1855-1859,  Life  of  Washington. 
1859  Died,  November  29. 

One  day  in  the  1820's,  so  a  well-authenticated  story 
runs,  an  English  lady  and  her  daughter,  passing 
through  an  art  gallery  in  Italy,  paused  before  a  bust  of 
Washington. 

"Who  was  Washington,  mamma  ?'*  said  the 
daughter. 

"Why,  my  dear,  don't  you  know!"  her  mother  re- 
plied.    "He  wrote  the  Sketch  Book.'' 

This  anecdote  reminds  one  of  three  significant 
things.  In  the  first  place,  the  author  of  the  Sketch 
Book  was  really  named  for  the  great  American  general, 


58  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

had  been  seen  and  blessed  by  George  Washington, 
and  wrote  as  his  last  great  work,  one  of  mingled 
scholarship  and  devotion,  a  Life  of  Washington. 

Again  this  anecdote  indicates  the  ignorance  which 
prevailed  in  England  concerning  America.  Mr.  Arnold 
Bennett  has  been  severely  criticized  for  the  misleading 
impressions  of  this  country  which  he  has  given  out 
since  his  visit  here.  If  Mr.  Bennett  has  committed 
errors,  he  has  done  so  in  illustrious  company.  Charles 
Dickens  nearly  seventy  years  ago  did  much  the  same 
thing.  Footnotes  and  text  of  Hazlitt's  writings  show 
how  much  of  mental  obliquity  and  bad  taste  he  was 
willing  to  attribute  to  "transatlantic  solitudes."  And 
every  American  reader  of  The  Deserted  Village  won- 
ders how  Goldsmith  could  honestly  have  been  so  mis- 
informed as  to  infest  the  meadows  and  groves  of 
Georgia  with  "dark  scorpions,"  "vengeful  snakes," 
and  "crouching  tigers."  Doubtless  most  English 
ladies  to-day  are  aware  that  Mr.  Henry  James  was  in 
no  way  to  be  confused  with  Patrick  Henry,  and  that 
Dr.  Booker  T.  Washington  was  not  literally  a 
descendant  of  "the  father  of  his  country";  possibly 
even  the  lady  in  the  Italian  gallery  was  a  ridiculous 
exception  to  the  generality  of  English  ladies  in  the 
1820's.  The  ignorance  of  the  two  nations  concerning 
each  other  is  still  very  great,  however.  And  in  the 
early  part  of  the  nineteenth  century  that  ignorance  was 
as  gross  as  it  was  exasperating  and  unfortunate.  The 
man  we  are  considering,  as  we  shall  see,  did  more 
than  any  other  to  dispel  this  mutual  ignorance. 

The  little  anecdote  indicates  yet  one  thing  more: 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  59 

that  to  even  an  unlearned  woman  of  the  1820's  the 
Sketch  Book  was  at  least  in  name  familiar.  A  few 
American  books,  most  of  them  by  Charles  Brockden 
Brown,  had  before  that  time  been  sold  in  England; 
but  they  had  not  introduced  household  words.  The 
Sketch  Book,  the  product  of  pioneering,  Indian-fight- 
ing, solitary  America,  took  in  England ;  and  doubtless 
Rip  Van  Winkle  and  Ichabod  Crane  are  known — as 
well,  perhaps,  as  King  Arthur  and  Robin  Hood  are 
known — by  English  people  who  would  locate  the  Hud- 
son in  Virginia,  and  Sleepy  Hollow  within  twenty 
minutes'  walk  of  Bunker  Hill. 

On  April  3,  1783,  just  five  months  before  the  Treaty 
of  Paris  was  signed  by  Great  Britain  and  the  United 
States,  Washington  Irving,  essayist  and  historian,  was 
born  in  New  York  City.  The  town  already  consid- 
ered itself  a  metropolis,  although  it  contained  less  than 
twenty-five  thousand  inhabitants,  and  where  the  City 
Hall  now  divides  endless  lines  of  travel  and  traffic 
Irving  and  his  boy  friends  played  on  open  meadows, 
over  jutting  rocks  and  boulders,  and  by  the  side  of  a 
brook  rippling  down  to  the  Hudson.  Many  of  the 
farmers  who  brought  their  products  in  boats  and  carts 
to  the  markets  of  the  city  talked  only  Dutch.  And 
when  in  1803  Irving  accepted  an  invitation  to  go  on 
a  journey  to  Ogdensburg  on  the  St.  Lawrence  River, 
he  was  exposed  to  hardships  greater  than  one  would 
expect  in  Labrador  or  in  western  Canada  to-day:  he 
heard  wolves  howling  about  the  camp  at  night,  he 
came  near  being  murdered  by  a  jealous  Indian,  and  at 


6o  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

Ogdensburg  he  helped  make  out  deeds  for  those  of  the 
party  who  wished  to  settle  in  the  newly-planned  town. 

His  parents  were  not  colonists  of  long  standing: 
they  had  come  to  New  York,  his  father  from  the 
Orkney  Islands,  and  his  mother  from  England,  in 
1763;  but  in  a  town  well  sprinkled  with  Tories,  they 
were  staunch  patriots.  When  their  youngest  child 
was  born,  the  mother  determined  to  name  him  for  the 
masterful  general  of  the  Colonial  forces.  And  one 
day  when  Washington  Irving  was  a  small  boy,  a  Scotch 
servant  who  was  caring  for  him  followed  the  Presi- 
dent of  the  United  States  into  a  shop  and  secured  for 
the  child  the  blessing  of  the  great  general  and  states- 
man. 

The  boy  was  not  altogether  healthy,  but  neither  was 
he  an  invalid;  and  if  he  learned  Httle  Latin  and  less 
mathematics,  and  spent  much  time  roaming  over  Man- 
hattan Island,  hunting  along  the  Hudson,  chatting 
with  the  Dutch  river  captains,  and  reading  Defoe 
and  Addison  and  such  other  lively  works  as  came 
his  way,  it  was  doubtless  because  he  had  an  un- 
concealed distaste  for  more  serious  pursuits.  His 
household  was  one  of  those  where  to  seek  amusement 
was  to  court  the  devil;  but  in  1849  Irving  pointed 
out  to  his  nephew  the  route — window  ledge  to  shed 
roof  to  board  fence  and  so  forth — which  it  had  been 
his  custom  to  follow  in  returning  to  the  theater,  after 
he  had  come  home  for  family  prayers  at  nine  o'clock, 
in  order  to  see  the  after-piece  instead  of  going  to 
bed. 

Two  of  his  brothers  attended  Columbia  College; 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  6i 

Irving  did  not.  The  only  promising  performance 
of  these  early  days  was  the  writing  of  a  series  of 
letters,  closely  modeled  upon  The  Spectator  and  The 
Tatler,  for  his  brother's  newspaper,  letters  quite  ap- 
propriately signed  "Jonathan  Oldstyle."  A  hundred 
years  later  a  boy  like  Irving  would  probably  have 
tried  to  be  original  in  style  and  subject-matter;  in 
1802,  to  imitate  Addison  closely  was  to  do  something 
worthy  of  the  highest  praise. 

By  1804  Irving's  health  had  greatly  declined.  It 
was  arranged  that  he  should  seek  improvement  in  a 
journey  to  Europe.  The  captain  of  the  vessel  on 
which  he  embarked  said  as  the  young  man  came  aboard 
that  he  was  destined  to  go  overboard  before  the  ship 
reached  the  other  side.  But  before  the  six  weeks*  trip 
was  ended,  Irving  was  climbing  all  over  the  vessel, 
and  after  a  few  weeks  on  the  Continent  nothing  more 
was  ever  said  of  consumption. 

He  used  his  opportunities  chiefly  for  pleasure.  He 
made  some  pretense  of  studying  in  Paris,  but  he 
records  attending  botany  lectures  and  theatrical  per- 
formances in  the  ratio  of  one  to  thirteen.  At  Messina 
he  saw  Nelson's  fleet  on  its  way  to  the  battle  of 
Trafalgar;  and  later  in  London  he  saw  the  body  of 
the  great  admiral,  lying  in  state  at  Greenwich.  An 
Italian  vessel  in  which  he  was  proceeding  to  Sicily 
was  overpowered  and  ransacked  by  pirates,  grim 
humorists  who  in  return  for  the  liquor  and  provisions 
which  they  had  seized  gave  a  receipt  and  an  order  on 
the  British  consul  for  payment  therefor.  He  did  ac- 
quire some  proficiency  in  European  languages,  and  he 


62  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

did  receive  a  polish  which  made  him  acceptable  and 
at  home  in  all  sorts  of  company. 

In  1806  he  returned  to  New  York,  ostensibly  to 
study  law,  but  really  to  be  a  thoroughly  charming 
man-about-town.  His  biographer  gives  an  anecdote 
which  illustrates  some  of  the  features  of  his  life  in 
these  days.  A  friend  named  Ogden,  it  seems,  had  left 
a  certain  gathering  ''with  a  brain  half  bewildered  by 
the  number  of  bumpers  he  had  been  compelled  to 
drink.  He  told  Irving  the  next  day  that  in  going 
home  he  had  fallen  through  a  grating,  which  had 
carelessly  been  left  open,  into  a  vault  beneath.  The 
solitude,  he  said,  was  rather  dismal  at  first,  but  several 
others  of  the  guests  fell  in,  in  the  course  of  the  even- 
ing, and  they  had  on  the  whole  quite  a  pleasant  night 
of  it."  The  real  character  of  Irving  had  not  yet  ap- 
peared. 

He  was  admitted  to  the  bar  in  1806.  Shortly  after- 
wards, in  conjunction  with  James  K.  Paulding,  and 
wholly,  it  seems,  as  a  means  of  amusing  himself  and 
the  town,  he  made  another  sally  as  a  writer.  This 
time  it  was  Salmagundi^  a  series  of  audacious  papers, 
independently  published,  and  intended,  as  they  de- 
clared, "to  instruct  the  young,  reform  the  old,  correct 
the  town,  and  castigate  the  age."  A  single  paragraph 
from  the  prospectus  will  illustrate  its  boldness : 

"We  beg  the  public  particularly  to  understand  that  we 
solicit  no  patronage.  We  are  determined,  on  the  contrary, 
that  the  patronage  shall  be  entirely  on  our  side.  We  have 
nothing  to  do  with  the  pecuniary  concerns  of  the  paper;  its 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  63 

success  will  yield  us  neither  pride  nor  profit — ^nor  will  its 
failure  occasion  us  either  loss  or  mortification.  We  advise 
the  public,  therefore,  to  purchase  our  numbers  merely  for 
their  own  sakes: — if  they  do  not,  let  them  settle  the  affair 
with  their  consciences  and  posterity." 

It  ran  for  a  year,  twenty  numbers  in  all,  appearing 
with  great  irregularity,  and  ceasing  as  suddenly  and 
as  inexplicably  as  it  had  begun.  With  this,  perhaps, 
developed  that  confidence  in  his  powers  which  later, 
when  he  was  pricked  to  action  by  necessity  rather 
than  by  the  spirit  of  fun,  determined  his  career. 

He  made  visits  to  Albany,  to  Philadelphia,  to  Balti- 
more and  Washington,  partly  on  business  for  his 
brothers  and  himself,  largely  on  social  errands.  And 
in  1809,  again  largely  for  amusement,  he  produced 
the  work  which  was  to  make  him  famous  to  his  con- 
temporaries if  not  to  posterity.  A  certain  Dr.  Samuel 
Mitchell,  one  of  the  Dryasdust  kind  of  antiquarians, 
had  published  an  erudite  but  dull  and  pedantic  work 
called  Picture  of  New  York,  portraying  first  the 
aborigines  and  then,  formally  and  prosaically,  the  suc- 
cessive events  in  the  town's  history.  Irving  and  his 
brother,  Peter,  began  a  burlesque  of  this  work.  They 
began  with  the  Creation  of  the  World!  Fortunately, 
it  is  said,  Peter  Irving  had  to  go  abroad  on  business ; 
and  Washington's  skill  and  taste  shaped  the  entire 
work.  The  ingenuity  which  had  conceived  and  exe- 
cuted Salmagundi  now  found  more  exalted  exercise. 

On  October  25,  1809,  this  notice  appeared  in  the 
Evening  Post: 


64  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

"DISTRESSING 

"Left  his  lodgings  some  time  since,  and  has  not  since  been 
heard  of,  a  small  elderly  gentleman,  dressed  in  an  old  black 
coat  and  cocked  hat,  by  the  name  of  KNICKERBOCKER. 
As  there  are  some  reasons  for  believing  he  is  not  entirely 
in  his  right  mind,  and  as  great  anxiety  is  entertained  about 
him,  any  information  concerning  him  left  either  at  the  Co- 
lumbian Hotel,  Mulberry  Street,  or  at  the  office  of  this  paper, 
will  be  thankfully  received." 

About  two  weeks  later  a  letter  addressed  to  the  editor 
and  signed  "A  Traveller"  informed  the  public  that  a 
person  answering  the  description  had  been  seen  by 
passengers  on  the  Albany  stage  resting  by  the  roadside 
a  little  above  Kingsbridge.  Ten  days  later,  a  letter 
signed  by  the  landlord  of  the  Columbian  Hotel  ap- 
peared, stating  that: 

"Nothing  satisfactory  has  been  heard  of  the  old  gentleman 
since;  but  a  very  curious  kind  of  a  written  book  has  been 
found  in  his  room  in  his  own  handwriting.  Now  I  wish  you 
to  notice  him,  if  he  is  still  alive,  that  if  he  does  not  return 
and  pay  off  his  bill,  for  board  and  lodgings,  I  shall  have  to 
dispose  of  his  Book,  to  satisfy  me  for  the  same." 

Finally,  in  December,  the  actual  publication  of  ^'  His- 
tory of  New  York  was  announced,  with  the  informa- 
tion : 

"This  work  was  found  in  the  chamber  of  Mr.  Diedrich 
Knickerbocker,  the  old  gentleman  whose  sudden  and  mysteri- 
ous disappearance  has  been  noticed.  It  is  published  in  order 
to  discharge  certain  debts  he  has  left  behind." 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  6$ 

The  mock  dulness  and  sly  pedantry  of  the  work 
grip  the  alert  reader  at  once.  The  following  para- 
graph, which  concludes  two  chapters  of  discussion  as 
to  the  nature  and  formation  of  the  earth,  conveys 
some  idea  of  its  style  and  spirit : 

"One  thing,  however,  appears  certain — from  the  unanimous 
authority  of  the  before-quoted  philosophers,  supported  by  the 
evidence  of  our  own  senses  (which,  though  very  apt  to  de- 
ceive us,  may  be  cautiously  admitted  as  additional  testimony), 
it  appears,  I  say,  and  I  make  the  assertion  deliberately, 
without  fear  of  contradiction,  that  this  globe  really  was  cre- 
ated, and  that  it  is  composed  of  land  and  water.  It  farther 
appears  that  it  is  curiously  divided  and  parcelled  out  into 
continents  and  islands,  among  which  I  boldly  declare  the  re- 
nowned ISLAND  OF  NEW- YORK  will  be  found  by  any 
one  who  seeks  for  it  in  its  proper  place." 

This  stupendous  piece  of  humor  aroused  some  re- 
sentment among  the  Dutch  people  whose  ancestors 
were  satirized;  but  for  the  most  part  it  awakened 
only  amusement.  Walter  Scott  among  foreign  readers 
was  particularly  appreciative,  and  asked  a  mutual 
friend  to  be  sure  to  let  him  have  anything  else  which 
might  come  from  the  same  source.  Some  readers 
thought  it  the  work  of  Scott. 

While  Irving  was  at  work  upon  Knickerbocker, 
Miss  Matilda  Hoffman,  daughter  of  the  man  with 
whom  he  had  been  studying  law,  Irving's  intended 
bride,  died  after  a  distressing  illness.  Her  Bible  and 
Prayer  Book  he  kept  with  him  throughout  his  life; 
he  never  could  bear  to  hear  Miss  Hoffman  spoken  of, 
never  of  his  own  accord  referred  to  her;  and  through- 


66  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

out  his  life,  although  he  met  the  most  gifted  and  at- 
tractive women  of  his  time  and  became  very  friendly 
with  some  of  them,  he  never  gave  to  any  the  place  at 
his  side  left  vacant  by  this  girl's  death.  The  spectacle 
presented  by  Charles  Lamb  in  love  affairs  is  hardly 
superior  to  the  spectacle  of  the  faithful  Irving. 

At  length  Irving  became  a  business  partner  of  his 
brothers*.  His  duties  were  almost  nominal,  and  he 
continued  his  round  of  enjoyment  and  mental  in- 
activity. When  the  War  of  1812  broke  out,  he  de- 
plored it — and  remained  inactive,  until  in  18 14  the 
government  buildings  in  Washington  were  burned  by 
the  British;  he  then  acted  as  secretary  and  military 
aid  to  the  governor  of  New  York  until  practically 
the  end  of  the  war  in  181 5. 

In  May,  181 5,  he  sailed  for  England  on  a  visit  to 
his  brother.  He  was  destined  to  remain  abroad  until 
he  came  home  loaded  with  honors,  the  recognized 
"father  of  American  letters,"  seventeen  years  later. 
Soon  after  reaching  England  his  brother  became  ill, 
and  the  affairs  of  the  firm  became  perplexing.  He 
made  occasional  visits  to  London  and  to  other  places 
of  interest;  one  visit  was  to  Sir  Walter  Scott  at 
Abbots  ford.  In  18 18,  he  and  his  brothers  escaped 
from  their  business  difficulties  by  going  into  bank- 
ruptcy. 

And  now  the  character  of  Irving,  which  had  gradu- 
ally been  forming,  began  to  appear  as  it  really  was. 
He  determined  to  win  a  living  by  his  pen.  An  offer 
of  a  clerkship  with  good  pay  in  the  Navy  Depart- 
ment at  Washington  came  to  him,  but  he  resolutely 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  0; 

declined  it.  He  had  for  some  time  been  revolving 
plans  for  a  literary  production ;  he  now  set  about  exe- 
cuting his  plans.  And  in  March,  1819,  he  sent  to  his 
brother  in  New  York — for  he  had  no  slightest  ex- 
pectation of  having  the  work  printed  or  read  in  Eng- 
land— the  early  sections  of  what  we  know  as  the 
Sketch  Book;  other  portions  followed,  and  from  May, 
1 8 19,  on  into  the  next  year,  successive  numbers  ap- 
peared. In  February,  1820,  so  great  had  grown  the 
danger  of  having  an  unauthorized  and  inaccurate  re- 
print appear  in  England,  Irving  undertook  on  his  own 
responsibility  to  print  the  work  there. 

Its  success  in  both  countries  was  very  great.  The 
reviewers  were  almost  unanimous  in  praise  of  it. 
Scott  wrote  his  most  hearty  approval,  and  persuaded 
Murray,  the  publisher,  to  take  over  the  responsibility 
for  the  English  edition. 

Irving  thus  described  his  modest  purpose  in  writ- 
ing the  book : 

"I  have  attempted  no  lofty  theme,  nor  sought  to  look  wise 
and  learned,  which  appears  to  be  very  much  the  fashion 
among  our  American  writers,  at  present.  I  have  preferred 
addressing  myself  to  the  feeling  and  fancy  of  the  reader, 
more  than  to  his  judgment.  My  writings,  therefore,  may 
appear  light  and  trifling  in  our  country  of  philosophers  and 
politicians;  but  if  they  possess  merit  in  the  class  of  litera- 
ture to  which  they  belong,  it  is  all  to  which  I  aspire  in  the 
work.  I  seek  only  to  blow  a  flute  accompaniment  in  the 
national  concert,  and  leave  others  to  play  the  fiddle  and 
French  horn." 

The  preface  to  the  work  itself,  no  less  than  the  essays, 
shows  how  his  boyish  spirit  and  humor  had  mellowed 


«8  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

and  ripened.  The  prevailing  kindness  and  good  nature 
of  the  book,  the  absence  from  it  of  all  jealousy,  ani- 
mosity and  provincialism  distinguish  it  among  works 
of  that  time  possessing  Anglo-American  significance. 

For  nearly  two  years  Irving  was  able  to  do  little 
further  work.  He  never  entertained  an  exalted  idea 
of  his  abilities,  and  the  praise  which  was  showered 
upon  him  seemed  to  paralyze  him  with  wonder  as  to 
whether  or  not  he  deserved  it.  He  traveled  on  the 
continent,  returned  to  England,  mingled  with  society, 
and  at  length,  in  1822,  printed  Bracebridge  Hall, 
simultaneously  in  America  and  in  England. 

The  rest  of  Irving's  life  is  of  minor  consequence 
to  the  student  of  essays.  In  1824  appeared  his  Tales 
of  a  Traveller,  consisting,  like  the  earlier  works,  of 
mingled  tale  and  essay.  He  was  for  a  time  attache  to 
the  American  legation  at  Madrid,  was  there  met  by 
Longfellow  (then  traveling  in  preparation  for  his 
work  as  Professor  of  Modern  Languages  at  Bowdoin 
College),  and  there  produced  his  Life  of  Columbus  in 
1828.  Later  he  was  secretary  to  the  legation  at  Lon- 
don. His  work  there  was  so  confining  that  it  left 
him  little  time  for  composition  or  for  society;  and 
when  in  183 1  an  opportunity  came  for  resigning  with 
honor,  he  seized  the  opportunity,  and  returned  to 
America.  He  was  received  as  befitted  the  man  who 
had  established  a  position  for  American  letters;  he 
was  given  a  dinner,  and  responded  in  great  trepida- 
tion to  a  toast — ^the  only  speech  he  ever  made. 

His  activity  was  very  great  Tales  of  the  Alhambra, 
called  by  Prescott  the  "Spanish  Sketch  Book,"  soon  ap- 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  69 

peared.  He  declined  flattering  political  opportunities. 
In  1833  he  purchased  and  began  to  develop  Sunnyside, 
or,  as  he  first  called  it,  the  Roost  (rest),  on  the  Hud- 
son below  Tarrytown.  Here  he  supported  in  great 
comfort  his  brothers  and  his  nieces.  Various  works 
written  by  him  there  appeared  from  time  to  time. 

An  impressive  instance  of  Irving's  self-denial  is 
recorded.  In  1838,  Irving  learned  that  his  friend 
Prescott  was  planning  to  begin  his  study  of  the  con- 
quest of  Mexico.  It  was  a  field  which  Irving,  un- 
known to  Prescott,  had  long  contemplated,  and  in 
which  he  had  already  collected  some  material.  Rather 
than  compete  with  Prescott,  however,  Irving  now 
promptly  and  uncomplainingly  abandoned  the  project. 

In  1842,  Charles  Dickens  visited  America;  the  one 
writer  to  whom  he  paid  court  was  Washington  Irving. 
Irving  presided  at  a  dinner  in  Dickens'  honor,  tried 
to  make  a  speech,  and  broke  down  in  the  middle  of  it. 
The  same  year  at  the  request  of  Daniel  Webster, 
Secretary  of  State,  Irving  accepted  the  important  of- 
fice of  minister  to  Spain.  For  four  years  he  endured 
the  burden  of  official  duties,  the  interruptions  in  his 
work  upon  his  Life  of  Washington,  and  the  absence 
from  his  beloved  Sunnyside.     He  then  returned  home. 

At  length  he  prepared  a  revised  edition  of  his 
works.  Struggling  against  failing  health,  he  produced 
Wolf  erf  s  Roost  in  1855,  a  series  of  essays  equal  in 
merit  to  those  of  the  Sketch  Book  and  of  Bracehridge 
Hall.  And  between  1855  and  1859  appeared  his  Life 
of  Washington.  He  now  began  to  dread  the  loss  of 
his  faculties.     *'I  do  not  fear  death,"  he  said,  "but  I 


70  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

would  like  to  go  down  with  all  sail  set."  And  he 
had  his  wish,  his  mind  remaining  clear  to  the  end, 
which  came  on  November  29th,  1859. 

If  each  of  the  authors  so  far  considered  had  been 
able  to  preserve  for  posterity  only  one  or  two  of  his 
works,  which,  one  wonders,  would  he  have  selected? 
Lamb  might  have  picked  the  Elia  essays;  but  presum- 
ably if  fondness  for  Mary  had  not  made  him  take 
their  joint  work,  the  Tales  from  Shakespeare,  his  own 
inherent  dignity  would  have  suffered  only  Specimens 
from  the  English  Dramatic  Poets.  Hazlitt  would 
surely  have  thrown  upon  the  life-raft,  first,  his  Life 
of  Napoleon,  and,  second,  that  discovery  of  The  Dis- 
interestedness of  Human  Action.  Irving  surely  would 
have  taken  one  or  more  of  his  biographies — had  they 
not  won  for  him  an  LL.D.  from  Oxford  University 
and  the  solid  reputation  he  enjoyed  ? 

Sooner  or  later  in  the  centuries  stretching  name- 
lessly  out  before  us,  our  great  libraries  must  sort  their 
collections.  It  is  inevitable  that  just  as  works  of  ob- 
scure writers  are  now  consigned  to  obscure  vaults,  so, 
in  some  future  time,  either  to  obscure  vaults  or  to  the 
trash  heap  must  go  the  obscure  works  of  noted 
authors.  Will  Lamb's  probable  choice  be  justified  at 
that  time?  Surely  Hazlitt's  will  not.  Of  Irving's 
works,  which  will  still  be  allowed  space  on  the  work- 
ing shelves?  The  Knickerbocker  History,  doubtless, 
at  least  in  a  thin-paper  edition ;  and  surely  those  lucu- 
brations, antique  in  flavor  but  forever  modern  in  their 
humor,  their  kindliness  and  good  nature — the  essays 
and  sketches  of  Geoffrey  Crayon,  Gent. 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  n 

Here,  then,  is  the  choice  essayist  whom  we  read 
in  the  Sketch  Book,  in  Bracebridge  Hall,  and  in  Wol- 
fert's  Roost;  sprightly,  courtly,  and  patriotic;  one  who 
for  fifty  years  was  faithful  to  the  memory  of  his  early 
love;  a  man  who  would  not  claim  for  his  own  a 
field  of  study  upon  which  a  friend  had  set  his  heart; 
a  spirit  which  in  an  age  of  political  and  artistic  ani- 
mosity and  jealousy  nourished  neither.  Few  succinct 
analyses  of  his  character  can  equal  Lowell's  in  A 
Fable  for  Critics: 

"To  a  true  poet-heart  and  the  fun  of  Dick  Steele 
Throw  in  all  of  Addison,  minus  the  chill, 
With  the  whole  of  that  partnership's  stock  and  good  will, 
Mix  well,  and  while  stirring,  hum  o'er,  as  a  spell, 
The  fine  old  English  Gentleman,  simmer  it  well. 
Sweeten  just  to  your  own  private  liking,  then  strain, 
That  only  the  finest  and  clearest  remain. 
Let  it  stand  out  of  doors  till  a  soul  it  receives 
From  the  warm  lazy  sun  loitering  down  through  green 

leaves 
And  you'll  find  a  choice  nature,  not  wholly  deserving 
A  name  either  English  or  Yankee, — just  Irving." 

(JAMES  HENRY)   LEIGH  HUNT   (1784-1859) 
Chronology 
1784  Born,  Southgate,  Middlesex,  October  19. 
1792  Entered   Christ's   Hospital    School. 

1807  Theatrical  criticisms  collected  and  published. 

1808  Began  weekly  Examiner  with  brother.  1812,  Prince 

Regent  affair ;  convicted  for  libel ;  imprisoned. 
1815-1817  The  Round  Table  essays,  with  Hazlitt  in  Ex- 
aminer.    1 816,  Introduced  Keats  to  Shelley  and 
both  to  public. 


72  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

1816  Story  of  Riminij  metrical  version  of  Paola  and 

Francesca  story. 
1819  The  Indicator,  periodical,  seventy-six  weeks. 
1821-1825  Italian  sojourn;  failure  of  the  Liberal. 
1828  Lord  Byron  and  Some  of  His  Contemporaries. 
1830-1832  The  Tatler,  four-page  daily. 
1833  Neighbor  of  the  Carlyles  in  Chelsea. 
1840  Play,  A  Legend  of  Florence,  at  Covent  Garden. 
1844  Poems   of  Imagination   and   Fancy,   a   collection. 
1847  Benefit  theatrical  performance  by  Dickens. 
1850  Autobiography ;  revised,  1859. 
1852  Dickens'  Bleak  House — Harold  Skimpole. 
1859  Death  at  Putney,  August  28. 

Many  people  who  look  perplexed  when  one  men- 
tions  Leigh   Hunt,    brighten   up    when   one   adds — 
author  of  Ahou  Ben  Adhem.    People  usually  brighten '; 
still  more  when  they  hear  also  these  other  lines  of 
his: 

"Jenny  kissed  me  when  we  met. 

Jumping  from  the  chair  she  sat  in; 
Time,  you  thief,  who  love  to  get 

Sweets  into  your  list,  put  that  in: 
Say   I'm  weary,  say  I'm   sad, 

Say  that  health  and  wealth  have  miss'd  me, 
Say  Pm  growing  old,  but  add, 
Jenny  kiss'd  me!" 

And  when  one  recalls  these  two  effusions  he  already 
has  a  fairly  comprehensive  notion  of  Leigh  Hunt. 
Simple  and  direct  in  his  religious  views,  full  of  child- 
like delight  over  attention  or  appreciation  or  favors -; 
from  others,  able  to  exalt  the  most  commonplace  emo- 
tions into  charming  literary  products,  he  was,  as 
Carlyle  said,  "free,  cheery,  idly  melodious  as  bird  on 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  73 

bough."  What  misery  and  trials  Hazlitt  enjoyed 
grumbhng  about,  and  Lamb  had  the  stamina  cheer- 
fully to  withstand,  Hunt  was  so  constituted  as  never 
seriously  to  regard  at  all.  The  two  ideas  expressed 
in  the  poems  referred  to — the  thought  that  love  of 
one's  fellowmen  (he  meant  not  service  as  we  should 
mean  to-day,  but  simple  spiritual  sympathy  and 
yearning)  would  merit  the  blessing  of  God's  love,  and 
the  recollection  that  a  beautiful  woman  (the  original 
is  said  to  have  been  Mrs.  Carlyle)  had  shown  him 
signal  favor — these  were  genuine  consolations  for  a 
grown-up  child  such  as  Hunt  was. 

Three  marked  characteristics  of  Hunt  as  a  man  can 
readily  be  traced  to  his  parents :  these  are  his  irre- 
sponsibility, financial  in  particular;  his  sensitiveness — 
sentimentalism  it  often  became ;  and  the  peculiar  sweet- 
ness and  beauty  of  his  religious  convictions.  His 
father,  a  descendant  of  one  of  the  earliest  Barbadoes 
settlers,  was  the  sanguine,  impractical  parent.  He  had 
been  educated  in  Philadelphia,  had  been  persecuted 
there  as  a  Loyalist  at  the  outbreak  of  the  Revolution, 
and  returning  to  England  had  become  a  popular 
preacher.  He  was  popular  also,  however,  at  dinner- 
tables  where  wine  circulated.  And  when  people  came 
to  him  in  distress,  he  went  security  for  them.  When 
at  length  he  received  a  Loyalist  Pension  of  one  hun- 
dred pounds  a  year,  he  was  obliged  to  mortgage  it. 
A  knock  at  the  door  of  the  Hunt  home  all  too  often 
meant  the  arrival  of  another  bailiff.  And  the  first 
room  Leigh  Hunt  had  any  recollection  of  was  a  prison. 

His  sensitiveness  Hunt  inherited  from  his  mother. 


74  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

She  was  of  a  Philadelphia  family  of  Quakers.  The 
flight  of  her  husband  from  that  city  pursued  by  a  mob 
seems  to  have  raised  to  a  passion  her  innate  horror 
of  war.  She  would  make  long  circuits  with  her  son  to 
avoid  the  proximity  of  a  fight  in  the  streets  or  even 
soldiers  strolling  in  the  parks.  She  inculcated  in  her 
son  the  principle  of  not  striking  back.  There  are 
numerous  examples  of  her  tender  care  for  ac- 
quaintances or  dependents  whom  others  had  aban- 
doned. This  anecdote,  related  by  Leigh  Hunt  in  his 
Autobiography,  is  characteristic: 

"One  holiday,  in  a  severe  winter,  as  she  was  taking  me 
home,  she  was  petitioned  for  charity  by  a  woman  sick  and 
ill-clothed.  It  was  in  Blackfriars  Road,  I  think  about  mid- 
way. My  mother,  with  the  tears  in  her  eyes,  turned  up  a 
gateway,  or  some  such  place,  and  beckoning  the  woman  to 
follow,  took  off  her  flannel  petticoat  and  gave  it  her.  It  is 
supposed  that  a  cold  which  ensued  fixed  the  rheumatism 
upon  her  for  life.  Actions  like  these  have  doubtless  been 
often  performed,  and  do  not  of  necessity  imply  any  great 
virtue  in  the  performer:  but  they  do  if  they  are  of  a  piece 
with  the  rest  of  the  character.  Saints  have  been  made  for 
charities  no  greater." 

Both  parents  possessed  a  religion  that  was  above 
all  tender,  not  vindictive,  not  dogmatic.  Hunt's  father 
began  as  a  clergyman  of  the  Established  Church  with 
a  weakness  for  preaching  charity  sermons — a  weak- 
ness formally  frowned  upon  by  the  unevangelical 
Church  authorities  of  the  time.  Both  parents  were 
led  by  their  unorthodox  speculations  to  become  Uni- 
tarians, with  also  a  firm  belief  in  Universalist  prin-  i 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  7S 

ciples.  It  was  to  them  as  to  Leigh  Hunt  at  once  horri- 
ble and  absurd  to  think  that  there  is  such  a  thing  as 
eternal  punishment.  To  think  other  than  that  "all 
mankind,  even  the  demons  themselves,  will  be  finally 
restored  to  happiness"  was  for  them  the  height  of 
impiety  toward  Almighty  God.  These  beliefs  were  not 
passive,  but  active  and  vivid;  they  permeate  Hunt's 
writings.  We  shall  see  how  truly  Hunt  in  these  dif- 
ferent ways  was  the  son  of  his  parents. 

Leigh  Hunt,  or,  as  he  was  christened,  James  Henry 
Leigh  Hunt,  entered  Christ's  Hospital  School  in  1792 
as  Coleridge  and  Lamb  quitted  it.  Because  of  a 
hesitation  in  his  speech  which  would  have  prevented 
his  success  as  a  clergyman,  he  was  not  sent  to  the 
University.  Reading,  writing,  and  the  simple  joys  of 
home  life  seem  to  have  occupied  him  as  a  youth.  At 
seventeen,  a  volume  of  his  Juvenilia  was  published  by 
subscription.  A  gift  from  his  father  of  a  set  of  the 
British  Classics,  a  collection  of  eighteenth  century 
periodical  essays,  uncovered  the  vein  which  he  was  to 
work  most  successfully  in  Hfe:  he  began  writing  es- 
says, and  soon  found  publishers.  Some  theatrical 
criticisms,  first  written  for  his  brother's  newspaper, 
were  reprinted  in  1807  as  Critical  Essays  on  Per- 
formances, etc.  This  method  of  reprinting  his  peri- 
odical essays  in  books  he  followed  throughout  his 
literary  career.  Various  clerkships  followed;  thei;i, 
in  conjunction  with  his  brother,  he  established  in  1808 
an  independent,  liberal  weekly  newspaper  called  The 
Examiner.    This  paper  is  said  to  have  raised  the  tone 


76  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

of  newspaper  writing,  then  none  too  high,  by  its  con- 
sistent fairness,  tolerance,  and  good  taste.  In  it  ap- 
peared between  1815  and  18 17  those  Round  Table  es- 
says, written  some  by  Hunt,  mostly  by  Hazlitt. 

The  brothers  Hunt  were,  however,  rather  too  inde- 
pendent for  their  times.  An  article  in  The  Examiner 
protesting  against  military  floggings  brought  upon 
them  a  court  trial  which  ended  in  acquittal.  Un- 
affected by  this  narrow  escape,  they  published  another 
article  which  exposed  the  blatant  flattery  of  certain 
contemporary  verses  regarding  the  Prince  Regent  and 
gave  a  plain  description  of  that  unsavory  gentleman. 
This  brought  on  another  libel  suit.  This  time  con- 
viction followed,  with  sentence  of  two  years'  im- 
prisonment and  a  fine  of  five  hundred  pounds,  to  be 
remitted  on  pledge  of  abstinence  from  such  attacks  in 
the  future.  Both  brothers  refused  to  give  this  pledge, 
and  Leigh  Hunt  served  the  full  term  in  Surrey  Gaol. 

His  health  almost  forsook  him  during  this  period, 
but  his  friends  and  his  spirits  did  not.  Lamb  records 
that  Hunt  had  so  transformed  his  "cell"  with  furni- 
ture, wall-paper,  and  flowers  that  it  seemed  a  fairy 
bower.  His  wife,  whom  he  had  married  in  1809,  was 
allowed  to  live  in  the  jail  with  him.  He  continued 
to  edit  The  Examiner  from  the  jail.  It  was  there, 
in  1816,  that  Hunt  introduced  Keats  to  Shelley;  and 
from  there,  through  The  Examiner,  he  introduced 
Keats  and  Shelley  to  the  public. 

Hunt's  first  long  poem,  The  Story  of  Rimini,  was 
a  version  of  the  Paolo  and  Francesca  story;  it  ap- 
peared in  1818.     A  complete  list  of  his  poems,  his 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  77 

books,  and  the  periodicals  on  which  he  was  successively 
engaged  is  superfluous.  The  most  notable  of  his 
works  are  The  Indicator,  which  ran  for  seventy-six 
weeks,  beginning  in  1819;  The  Tatler,  a  four-page 
daily,  which  from  1830  to  1832  Hunt  wrote  and  pub- 
lished all  alone;  Imagination  and  Fancy,  a  collection 
of  extracts  with  critical  notices  and  an  Essay  on 
Poetry,  published  in  1844;  ai^d  his  Autobiography 
(regarded  by  Carlyle  as  second  in  biographical  writ- 
ing only  to  Bosweirs  Johnson),  first  published  in  1850, 
and  brought  up  to  date  in  1859. 

Two  painful  incidents  remain  to  be  chronicled.  In 
1 82 1,  Shelley  and  Byron,  both  then  living  in  Italy, 
persuaded  Hunt  to  undertake  at  Pisa  the  editing  of  a 
quarterly  magazine  which  from  that  point  could  be 
more  liberal  than  would  be  safe  in  London.  After 
many  delays  Hunt  arrived  in  Italy  with  his  family. 
The  project  soon  proved  forlorn.  In  July,  182 1, 
Shelley  was  drowned  off  the  Italian  coast.  Hunt 
wrote  the  epitaph  for  his  tomb.  Byron's  interest  in 
the  magazine,  always  fickle,  now  cooled.  Hunt  at  first 
moved  about,  to  Greece  and  elsewhere,  with  Byron, 
finding  it  harder  and  harder  tO'  support  himself  and  his 
family.  At  length,  in  1825,  he  managed  to  return  to 
England.  And  in  1828  in  a  work  called  Lord  Byron 
and  Some  of  His  Contemporaries,  he  revealed  much 
about  the  poet,  by  that  time  deceased,  which  as  Byron's 
favored  acquaintance  he  ought  rather  to  have  con- 
cealed. As  the  Italian  project  was  the  great  mis- 
fortune, this  publication  was  the  great  blunder  of  his 
life. 


78  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

The  other  painful  event  occurred  in  1852.  The 
character  of  Harold  Skimpole,  in  Dickens'  Bleak 
House  published  that  year,  was  at  once  thought  by 
Hunt's  acquaintances  to  be  a  caricature  of  Hunt — 
his  improvidence,  his  sentimentalism,  his  good  nature. 
Now  Dickens  had  been  Hunt's  generous  friend;  in 
1847,  with  an  amateur  company,  Dickens  had  given 
a  benefit  theatrical  performance  for  Hunt.  And 
Dickens  promptly  disclaimed  any  but  the  most  in- 
direct connection  between  Hunt  and  Harold  Skim- 
pole. But  the  likeness  was  there,  and  the  facts 
rankled. 

In  1857,  Hunt's  wife  died.  In  1859,  appeared  his 
last  series  of  papers,  in  The  Spectator.  On  August  28, 
1859,  he  died  in  Putney,  asking  eager  questions  about 
current  events  and  about  his  relatives.  Over  his  tomb 
in  Kensal  Green  Cemetery  his  bust  has  been  erected 
with  the  inscription, 

"Write  me  as  one  who  loved  his  fellow  men." 


These  are  the  bare  facts.  Something  of  the  spirit 
of  Leigh  Hunt  is  indicated  by  that  stand  for  the  truth 
in  the  Prince-Regent  case,  and  by  that  patient  en- 
durance of  imprisonment.  Something  more  is  indi- 
cated by  the  persistence  with  which  he  pursued  his 
literary  career,  often  subsisting  on  bread  and  water,  . 
often  during  the  worst  years  (1834-1840)  going  with- 
out food, — ^lacking  grit,  perhaps,  as  Hawthorn^  said, 
yet  ever  courageous,  sweet-tempered,   forgiving.     A 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  79 

few  anecdotes  will  perhaps  round  out  a  comprehensive 
idea  of  the  man. 

Along  with  a  hatred  of  quarreling,  Hunt's  mother 
had  transmitted  to  him  a  disgust  for  profanity.  He 
says: 

"she  had  produced  in  me  such  a  horror,  or  rather  such 
an  intense  idea  of  even  violent  words,  and  of  the  commonest 
trivial  oath,  that  being  led  one  day,  perhaps  by  the  very 
excess  of  it,  to  snatch  a  'fearful  joy*  in  its  utterance,  it 
gave  so  much  remorse  that  for  some  time  afterward  I  could 
not  receive  a  bit  of  praise,  or  a  pat  of  encouragement  on 
the  head,  without  thinking  to  myself,  *Ah,  they  little  sus- 
pect that  I  am  the  boy  who  said  d — ^n  it' " 

Observe  the  impressibility,  the  sensitiveness,  which 
are  indicated  by  this  middle-age  memory: 

"That  is  a  pleasant  time  of  life,  the  play-going  time  in 
youth,  when  the  coach  is  packed  full  to  go  to  the  theatre,  and 
brothers  and  sisters,  parents  and  lovers  (none  of  whom, 
perhaps,  go  very  often)  are  all  wafted  together  in  a  flurry  of 
expectation;  when  the  only  wish  as  they  go  (except  with 
the  lovers)  is  to  go  as  fast  as  possible,  and  no  sound  is  so 
delightful  as  the  cry  of  'Bill  of  the  Play';  when  the  smell 
of  links  in  the  darkest  and  muddiest  winter's  night  is  charm- 
ing; and  the  steps  of  the  coach  are  let  down;  and  a  roar  of 
hoarse  voices  round  the  door,  and  mud-shine  on  the  pave- 
ment, are  accompanied  with  the  sight  of  the  warm-looking 
lobby  which  is  about  to  be  entered;  and  they  enter,  and  pay, 
and  ascend  the  pleasant  stairs,  and  begin  to  hear  the  silence 
of  the  house,  perhaps  the  first  jingle  of  the  music;  and  the 
box  is  entered  amidst  some  little  awkwardness  in  descending 
to  their  places  and  being  looked  at;  and  at  length  they  sit, 
and  are  become  used  to  by  their  neighbors,  and  shawls  and 


8o  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

smiles  are  adjusted,  and  the  play-bill  is  handed  round  or 
pinned  to  the  cushion,  and  the  gods  are  a  little  noisy,  and 
the  music  veritably  commences,  and  at  length  the  curtain  is 
drawn  up,  and  the  first  delightful  syllables  are  heard: 
*Ah !  my  dear  Charles,  when  did  you  see  the  lovely  Olivia  ?' 
*Oh !  my  dear  Sir  George,  talk  not  to  me  of  Olivia.  The 
cruel  guardian,'  etc." 

Again,  Hunt  thrills  us  with  the  delicacy  of  his  senti- 
ment in  this : 

"Dr.  Young  talks  of— 

"  That  hideous  sight,  a  naked  human  heart  ;* 
a  line  not  fit  to  have  been  written  by  a  human  being.  ...  I 
don't  believe  it.    I  don't  believe  he  had  a  right  thus  to  cal- 
umniate it,  much  less  that  of  his  neighbor,  and  of  the  whole 
human  race. 

"I  saw  a  worse  sight  than  the  heart,  in  a  journey  which 
I  took  into  a  neighboring  county.  It  was  an  infant,  all 
over  sores,  and  cased  in  steel;  the  result  of  the  irregularities 
of  its  father:  and  I  confess  that  I  would  rather  have  seen 
the  heart  of  the  very  father  of  that  child,  than  I  would  the 
child  himself.  ...  I  never  beheld  such  a  sight,  before  or 
since,  except  in  one  of  the  pictures  of  Hogarth  in  his  Rake's 
Progress;  and  I  sadden  this  page  with  the  recollection,  for 
the  same  reason  that  induced  him  to  paint  it." 

One  of  the  most  striking  things  about  Hunt  is  his 
whole-souled  admiration  of  human  life  regardless  of 
the  hardships  he  experienced.  In  one  essay  he  fancies 
some  of  the  comforts  and  joys  of  heaven.  Among  the 
blessings  he  enumerates  are  a  friend;  a  mistress  (the 
term,  he  says,  is  legal,  since  there  is  in  heaven  no  mar- 
rying nor  giving  in  marriage) ;  books — Spenser  and 
Shakespeare  shall  write  new  ones,  and  Scott  forty 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  8i 

more  as  good  as  the  Scotch  ones;  tea  for  breakfast'; 
horses  to  ride ;  and,  finally,  this : 

"The  weather  will  be  extremely  fine,  but  not  without 
such  varieties  as  shall  hinder  it  from  being  tiresome.  April 
will  dress  the  whole  country  in  diamonds;  and  there  will  be 
enough  cold  in  winter  to  make  a  fire  pleasant  of  an  evening. 
The  fire  will  be  made  of  sweet-smelling  turf  and  sunbeams; 
but  it  will  have  a  look  of  coal.  If  we  choose  now  and  then, 
we  shall  even  have  inconveniences." 

His  essay  is  entitled  An  Earth  Upon  Heaven! 

In  his  Deaths  of  Little  Children,  the  favorite  essay 
(howr  pathetic  to  recall!)  of  Charles  Lamb,  written 
within  sight  of  the  grave  of  one  of  his  own  children, 
he  expresses  this  delicate  and  beautiful  consolation: 

"Those  who  have  lost  an  infant  are  never,  as  it  were,  with- 
out an  infant  child.  They  are  the  only  persons  who,  in  one 
sense,  retain  it  always;  and  they  furnish  their  neighbors 
with  the  same  idea.  The  other  children  grow  up  to  manhood 
and  womanhood,  and  suffer  all  the  changes  of  mortality. 
This  one  alone  is  rendered  an  immortal  child.  Death  has 
arrested  it  with  its  kindly  harshness,  and  blessed  it  into  an 
eternal  image  of  youth  and  innocence." 

Even  for  the  Prince  Regent,  whose  conduct  filled 
him  with  disgust  and  on  whose  account  he  had  suf- 
fered much,  he  had  no  vindictiveness.  In  concluding 
the  account  of  The  Examiner  incident  in  his  Auto- 
biography, he  says: 

"Neither  have  I  any  quarrel,  at  this  distance  of  time,  with 
the  Prince  Regent;  for  though  his  frivolity,  his  tergiversa- 


&  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

tion,  and  his  treatment  of  his  wife,  will  not  allow  me  to  re- 
spect his  memory,  I  am  bound  to  pardon  it  as  I  do  my  own 
faults,  in  consideration  of  the  circumstances  which  mould 
the  character  of  every  human  being.  Could  I  meet  him 
in  some  odd  corner  of  the  Elysian  fields,  where  charity  had 
room  for  both  of  us,  I  should  first  apologize  to  him  for 
having  been  the  instrument  in  the  hand  of  events  for  at- 
tacking a  fellow-creature,  and  then  expect  to  hear  him  avow 
as  heartily  a  regret  for  having  injured  myself,  and  unjustly 
treated  his  wife." 

Both  Carlyle  and  Hawthorne  speak  of  the  sad  con- 
trast between  Hunt's  nature  and  his  ordinary  sur- 
roundings. Having  emphasized  the  neatness  and 
propriety  of  Hunt's  appearance  whenever  he  went 
visiting,  Carlyle  writes  further: 

"His  Household,  while  in  '4  Upper  Cheyne  Row,'  within 
few  steps  of  us  here,  almost  at  once  disclosed  itself  to  be 
huggermugger,  wwthrift,  and  sordid  collapse,  once  for  all; 
and  had  to  be  associated  with  on  cautious  terms; — while  he 
himself  emerged  out  of  it  in  the  chivalrous  figure  I  describe. 
Dark  complexion  (a  trace  of  the  African,  I  believe),  copi- 
ous, clean,  strong,  black  hair,  beautifully-shaped,  fine  beam- 
ing serious  hazel  eyes;  seriousness  and  intellect  the  main 
expression  of  the  face  (to  our  surprise  at  first), — he  would 
lean  on  his  elbow  against  the  mantel-piece  (fine,  clean,  elas- 
tic figure  too  he  had,  five  feet  ten  or  more),  and  look  round 
him  nearly  in  silence,  before  taking  leave  for  the  night; 
as  if  I  were  a  Lar,  said  he  once,  or  permanent  Household 
God  here!  (Such  his  polite  Ariel-like  way.)  Another 
time,  rising  from  this  Lar  attitude,  he  repeated  (voice  very 
fine)  as  if  in  sport  of  parody,  yet  with  something  of  very 
sad  perceptible:  While  I  to  sulphurous  and  penal  fire — as 
the  last  thing  before  vanishing." 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  83 

And  Hawthorne,  after  describing  Hunt's  sordid 
quarters,  continues: 

"Leigh  Hunt  was  born  with  such  a  faculty  of  enjoying 
all  beautiful  things  that  it  seemed  as  if  fortune  did  him  as 
much  wrong  in  not  supplying  them  as  in  withholding  a  suf- 
ficiency of  vital  breath  from  ordinary  men.  .  .  .  Leigh  Hunt 
loved  dearly  to  be  praised.  That  is  to  say,  he  desired  sym- 
pathy as  a  flower  seeks  sunshine,  and  perhaps  profited  by  it 
as  much  in  the  richer  depth  of  coloring  that  it  imparted 
to  his  ideas.  In  response  to  all  that  we  ventured  to  express 
about  his  writings  (and,  for  my  part,  I  went  quite  to  the 
extent  of  my  conscience,  which  was  a  long  way,  and  there 
left  the  matter  to  a  lady  and  a  young  girl,  who  happily 
were  with  me),  his  face  shone,  and  he  manifested  great 
delight,  with  a  perfect  and  yet  delicate  frankness  for  which 
I  loved  him.  He  could  not  tell  us,  he  said,  the  happiness  that 
such  appreciation  gave  him;  it  always  took  him  by  surprise, 
he  remarked,  for — perhaps  because  he  cleaned  his  own  boots, 
and  performed  other  little  ordinary  offices  for  himself — he 
never  had  been  conscious  of  anything  wonderful  in  his  own 
person.  And  then  he  smiled,  making  himself  and  all  the 
poor  little  parlor  about  him  beautiful  thereby.  ...  I  wish 
that  he  could  have  had  one  full  draught  of  prosperity  be- 
fore he  died.  As  a  matter  of  artistic  propriety,  it  would 
have  been  delightful  to  have  seen  him  inhabiting  a  beautiful 
house  of  his  own,  in  an  Italian  climate,  with  all  sorts  of 
elaborate  upholstery  and  minute  elegances  about  him,  and  a 
succession  of  tender  and  lovely  women  to  praise  his  sweet 
poetry  from  morning  to  night." 

Enough  has  surely  been  said  to  enable  the  reader 
to  distinguish  the  real  Leigh  Hunt  in  his  writings.  It 
is  perhaps  easy  to  dwell  too  long  upon  him,  to  appear 
to  claim  too  much  for  him.  It  should  be  remembered, 
however,  that  he  enjoyed  the  respect  and  the  love  of 


84  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

SO  finical  a  creature  as  Carlyle,  and  that  men  like  Lamb, 
Hazlitt,  Hawthorne,  and  Lowell  not  only  suffered  but 
sought  his  friendship.  Through  his  critical  essays  and 
the  exuberant  quotations  in  all  his  works,  he  popu- 
larized Chaucer,  Spenser,  and  Milton.  And  to  have 
introduced  Keats  and  Shelley  to  each  other  and  to 
the  world  is  to  have  deserved  extraordinarily  well  of 
posterity.  After  all,  however,  we  shall  remember  him 
longest  for  his  simple,  kindly  presentation  of  homely 
facts  and  fancies.    It  is  as  Professor  Winchester  says : 

"...  we  could  still  select  from  Hunt's  writing  a  goodly 
volume  of  essays  hard  to  surpass  in  their  kind.  They  are 
made  up  of  trifles;  but  then  life  is  made  up  of  trifles.  We 
need  not  withhold  some  cordial  liking  from  that  kind  of 
literature  which  does  not  attempt  to  arouse  or  inspire,  but 
rather  to  express  the  familiar  pleasures  that  cheer,  and 
the  familiar  trials  that  chasten  the  hours  of  every  day.  .  .  . 
He  was  not  of  the  stuff  that  scorns  delights  and  lives 
laborious  days.  He  had  solved  no  problems,  inspired  no 
heroisms,  written  no  masterpieces.  But  he  did  something 
in  early  life  for  the  cause  of  civil  liberty;  he  did  more,  I 
think,  in  his  later  years  to  quicken  and  widen  the  love  of 
good  literature.  And  through  all  that  half-century,  by  three 
generations  of  friends,  he  was  known  as  a  genial,  cheery 
man,  who  never  felt  the  tedium  of  life,  was  hopeful  under 
all  its  discouragements,  impatient  of  all  harshness,  fond  of 
all  gentle  and  beautiful  things." 

THOMAS   DE  QUINCEY    (1785-1859) 
Chronology 
1785  Born,  August  15,  at  Manchester;  son  of  a  well-to- 
do  merchant. 
1796  At  Bath  Grammar  School. 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  85 

1801  To  Manchester  Grammar  School.    Wrote  and  spoke 

Greek.     No   exercise,   hard   study,   abuse,  liver 
trouble,  dosing. 

1802  Ran  away.     Journey  through  Wales  to  London; 

poverty,  sufferings,  Ann. 

1804  At  Winchester  College,  Oxford.  Began  opium- 
eating — rheumatism  or  neuralgia.  Admiration 
for  Wordsworth  and  Coleridge. 

1807  Made  acquaintance  of  Coleridge ;  left  Oxford  with- 
out degree. 

1809  Leased  cottage  vacated  by  Wordsworth  at  Gras- 
mere;  stomach  disease;  opium;  inactivity;  philo- 
sophical studies. 

1 81 6  Married  Margaret  Simpson,  farmer's  daughter. 

18 1 9  Edited  Westmoreland  Gazette,  local  newspaper. 

1821  Went  to  live  in  London;  Confessions  in  London 
Magazine. 

1827  On  Murder  in  Blackwood's.  1832,  Klosterheim,  a 
novel. 

1840  Moved  to  Lasswade,  near  Edinburgh. 

1844  Finally  overcame  opium  habit.  Logic  of  Political 
Economy. 

1849  English  Mail  Coach  in  Blackwood's. 

185 1-2  First  collected  edition  of  Works — America. 

1859  Died,  December  8.  Buried  in  West  Churchyard, 
Edinburgh. 

"I  have  observed,"  says  Addison,  in  the  first  num- 
ber of  The  Spectator,  "that  a  reader  seldom  peruses  a 
book  with  pleasure,  until  he  know  whether  the  writer 
of  it  be  a  black  or  a  fair  man,  of  a  mild  or  choleric 
disposition,  married  or  a  batchelor,  with  other  particu- 
lars of  the  like  nature,  that  conduce  very  much  to  the 
right  understanding  of  an  author."  And  life  and  writ- 
ings of  no  author  on  our  list  are  more  closely  bound 


86  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

Up  together  than  those  of  Thomas  De  Quincey.  Even 
his  most  objective  essays,  such  as  On  Murder  and  Joan 
of  Arc,  vividly  reflect  his  temperament  and  his  ex- 
periences; far  the  greater  part  of  his  work  is  frankly 
autobiographical.  Living,  in  all  its  phases,  and 
especially  in  its  inner,  intellectual  manifestations,  was 
fascinating  business  to  De  Quincey ;  and  books,  articles 
— they  were  the  means  of  sharing  this  fascination  with 
others. 

Ingrained  zest  of  living  and  feeling  and  knowing 
was  probably  never  more  essential  to  any  man.  With 
it  he  lived  to  a  ripe  age,  and  enlarged  the  record  of 
man's  proper  and  age-long  study  by  rich  accounts  of 
the  man  De  Quincey.  Without  the  inborn  zest  of 
living,  he  would  doubtless  have  found  a  place,  while 
still  a  youth,  in  the  Potter's  Field. 

Glance  at  the  vivid  miniature  painted  by  Carlyle: 

"One  of  the  smallest  man-figures  I  ever  saw;  shaped 
like  a  pair  of  tongs ;  and  hardly  above  five  feet  in  all :  when 
he  sat,  you  would  have  taken  him  by  candle-light  for  the 
beautifullest  little  child;  blue-eyed,  blonde-haired,  sparkling 
face, — had  there  not  been  a  something,  too,  which  said, 
'Eccovi,  this  child  has  been  in  Hell !' " 

Diminutive  in  size,  prococious  in  intellect,  super- 
sensitive in  temperament,  his  earliest  recollections 
were  those  of  deaths  in  the  family — first  his  beloved 
sister's,  then  his  father's.  The  next  most  poignant 
were  of  the  cruelties  inflicted  by  older,  pugnacious 
brothers.  An  abused  school-boy  at  sixteen,  he  ran 
away  at  seventeen,  and  wandered  through  Wales  and 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  87 

to  London,  often  sleeping  on  open  hillsides,  seldom 
properly  fed.  London's  welcome  and  hospitality  to 
such  a  wanderer  may  be  surmised.  He  found  shelter 
in  a  house  noteworthy  for  its  hermit-like  tenant,  for 
the  rats  it  harbored,  and  for  the  half -starved  little 
girl  who  was  its  only  housekeeper.  He  associated, 
in  all  the  innocence  of  mutual  misery  and  forlornity, 
with  an  outcast  woman  named  Ann;  she  once  saved 
his  life  by  securing  wine  for  him  when  he  was  faint 
with  starvation;  and  it  was  the  torture  of  his  sub- 
conscious existence  after  better  times  had  come  for 
him  that  he  was  unable  to  find  and  reward  her. 

While  a  young  student  at  Oxford  he  began  the 
practice  of  taking  opium.  The  hardships  he  had 
undergone  both  as  a  schoolboy  and  as  a  wanderer  in 
Wales  and  in  London  had  resulted  in  a  most  acute 
and  violent  rheumatism  or  neuralgia.  Later  he  was 
seized  with  an  irritation  of  the  stomach,  since  diag- 
nosed to  have  been  a  peculiar  disease.  In  each  case 
he  resorted  to  opium  and  drank  it  in  huge  quantities; 
he  later  decreased  his  doses,  then  experimented  with 
himself,  then  lapsed  into  excesses,  finally  fought  and 
overcame  the  habit. 

He  strove  persistently  against  irregularities  and 
weaknesses  of  other  kinds — against  financial  improvi- 
dence and  gullibility,  against  utter  lack  of  method  in 
study  and  composition.  At  his  death  he  was  paying 
rent  on  six  sets  of  Edinburgh  lodgings  each  of  which 
he  had  occupied  in  turn  until  accumulated  books,  pa- 
pers, and  manuscripts  had  crowded  out  of  doors  the 
author;  he  once  went  to  call  on  a  friend,  and  re- 


88  :  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

mained  in  his  house  a  year;  he  is  said  to  have  gone 
about  Edinburgh  with  a  five-pound  note  unused  in 
his  pocket,  trying  in  vain  to  find  some  one  to  lend  him 
a  shilHng. 

Seventy- four  years  of  pain  and  struggle  and  ec- 
centricity, fourteen  volumes  or  so  of  writings — con- 
sisting chiefly  of  one  hundred  and  fifty  magazine 
articles,  a  total  of  several  times  that  much  written 
but  never  published — fit  only,  his  mind  being  gone, 
to  be  carried  from  the  six  snowed-up  apartments  to 
the  city  bonfire :  that  is  the  exhibition  we  contemplate 
in  the  life  and  works  of  De  Quincey. 

Why  do  we  remember  him?  Why  does  every 
series  of  popular  reprints  include  one  or  more  volumes 
by  him  ?  Why  do  literary  critics  and  historians  omit- 
ting often  every  other  author  we  have  treated  except 
Lamb,  invariably  treat  at  length  of  De  Quincey? 

Well,  it  is  not  because  of  any  divine  or  superhuman 
or  inspiring  message  which  he  had  to  deliver.  The 
element  of  warning  contained  in  his  Confessions  of 
an  English  Opium-Eater  is  for  many  readers  obscured 
by  the  pervading  attractiveness  of  opium-eating  there 
depicted.  It  would  be  hard  to  discover  a  single  im- 
portant item  added  by  De  Quincey  to  the  sum  of 
human  knowledge  or  the  wealth  of  real  human  happi- 
ness. He  devised  no  theory,  no  doctrine  which  would 
make  more  simple  and  intelligible  the  baffling  com- 
plexity, the  inchoateness  of  human  experience. 

De  Quincey,  furthermore,  would  not  be  persistently 
remembered  for  his  skill  in  the  presentation  of  ideas. 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  89 

This  skill  may  attract  for  a  time,  but  it  soon  becomes 
obvious  that  almost  every  one  of  his  compositions  in- 
cludes material  that  is  superfluous,  digressions  that 
often  obscure  and  that  frequently  do  not  entertain. 
His  humor  is  seldom  attractive;  it  is  usually  so 
forced  and  unnatural  as  to  be  almost  vulgar.  This 
quality  sometimes  approaches  a  playfulness  which  is 
not  wholly  displeasing,  as  in  the  following  passage 
concerning  Lamb: 

"Perhaps  the  collective  wisdom  of  Europe  could  not  have 
devised  for  Lamb  a  more  favorable  condition  of  toil  than 
this  very  India  House  clerkship.  His  works  (his  Leaden- 
hall  street  works)  were  certainly  not  read;  popular  they 
could  not  be,  for  they  were  not  read  by  anybody;  but  then, 
to  balance  that,  they  were  not  reviewed.  .  .  .  The  list  of 
errata  again,  committed  by  Lamb,  was  probably  of  a  magni- 
tude to  alarm  any  possible  compositor;  and  yet  these  errata 
will  probably  never  be  known  to  mankind.  They  are  dead 
and  buried.  .  .  .  Then  the  returns,  in  a  pecuniary  sense, 
from  these  folios — how  important  were  they !  It  is  not  com- 
mon, certainly,  to  write  folios;  but  neither  is  it  common  to 
draw  a  steady  income  from  300  I.  to  400  I.  per  annum  from 
volumes  of  any  size." 

Usually,  however,  his  humor  is  of  the  sort  indicated 
by  the  following  extracts,  each  from  his  essay  on  the 
dignified  subject  of  Style: 

"You,  therefore,  oh,  reader!  if  personally  cognisant  of 
dumb-bells,  we  shall  remind — if  not,  we  shall  inform — that 
it  is  a  cylindrical  bar  of  iron,  issuing  at  each  end  in  a  globe 
of  the  same  metal,  and  usually  it  is  sheathed  in  green  baize; 
but,  perfidiously  so,  if  that  covering  is  meant  to  conceal  the 


90  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

fact  of  those  heart-rending  thumps  which  it  inflicts  upon 
one's  too  confiding  fingers  every  third  ictus.  .  .  .  Now, 
reader,  it  is  under  this  image  of  the  dumb-bell  we  couch 
an  allegory.  Those  globes  at  each  end  are  the  two  systems 
or  separate  clusters  of  Greek  literature;  and  that  cylinder 
which  connects  them,  is  the  long  man  that  ran  into  each 
system — binding  the  two  together.  Who  was  that?  It  was 
Isocrates.  Great  we  cannot  call  him  in  conscience;  and, 
therefore,  by  way  of  compromise,  we  call  him  long,  which, 
in  one  sense,  he  certainly  was ;  for  he  lived  through  f our-and- 
twenty  Olympiads,  each  containing   four  solar  years." 

"Who  were  they  that  next  took  up  the  literary  use  of 
prose?  Confining  our  notice  to  people  of  celebrity,  we  may 
say  that  the  house  of  Socrates  {Domus  Socratica  is  the  ex- 
pression of  Horace)  were  those  who  next  attempted  to  popu- 
larise Greek  prose;  viz.,  the  old  gentleman  himself,  the 
founder  of  the  concern,  and  his  two  apprentices,  Plato  and 
Xenophon." 

"These,  unless  parried,  are  knock-down  blows  to  the  Socra- 
tic,  and  therefore  to  the  Platonic  philosophy.  .  .  .  And  all 
the  German  Tiedemanns  and  Tennemanns,  the  tedious  men 
and  the  tenpenny-men,  that  have  their  twelve  or  their  eigh- 
teen volumes  viritim  upon  Plato,  will  find  it  hard  to  satisfy 
their  readers,  etc." 

If  De  Quincey's  fame  is  unlikely,  then,  to  be  per- 
petuated either  by  his  digressions  or  by  his  peculiar 
humor,  so  it  is  unlikely  to  be  perpetuated  by  the  gen- 
eral effect  of  his  style.  That  style  is  invariably  self- 
conscious;  one  can  never  forget  that  the  most  beauti- 
ful of  the  impassioned  passages  are  composed.  He 
writes  not  to  relieve  the  burden  upon  his  heart,  not 
because  he  must,  but  to  show  what  it  is  possible  for 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  91 

man  to  do  with  words,  to  reveal  his  own  peculiar  capa- 
bilities. He  is  less  a  literary  artist,  less  indeed  a 
literary  artisan,  than  a  literary  acrobat  or  prestidigi- 
tator. 

Still  men  honor  and  cherish  him,  and  will  con- 
tinue to  do  so.  The  fundamental  reason  for  this 
seems  to  be  that  in  De  Quincey  we  perceive  certain 
valuable  human  attributes  developed  to  a  stimulat- 
ing and  inspiring  degree. 

The  first  of  these  attributes  is  his  vast  knowledge. 
Science,  philosophy,  history  of  all  countries,  the  litera- 
ture of  all  languages,  the  details  and  the  working  of 
the  human  machine,  the  face  of  nature, — of  all  these 
things  he  seems  to  know  all.  The  passages  quoted 
above,  like  any  page  from  his  writings,  confirm  this 
statement. 

Of  course,  this  exhibition  of  knowledge  is  possible 
and  natural  because  De  Quincey  had  the  industry 
to  read  and  to  observe  widely,  and  a  marvelous  mem- 
ory for  what  he  had  read  and  seen.  This  is  the  second 
stimulating  quality  of  De  Quincey.    He  says : 

"Rarely  do  things  perish  from  my  memory  that  are  worth 
remembering.  Rubbish  perishes  instantly.  Hence  it  happens 
that  passages  in  Latin  or  English  poets,  which  I  never  could 
have  read  but  once  (and  that  thirty  years  ago),  often  begin 
to  blossom  anew  when  I  lie  awake  unable  to  sleep.  I  become 
a  distinguished  compositor  in  the  darkness;  and  with  my 
aerial  composing-stick  sometimes  I  'set  up'  half  a  page  of 
verses,  which  would  be  found  tolerably  correct  if  collated 
with  the  volume  that  I  never  had  in  my  hand  but  once.  I 
mention  this  in  no  spirit  of  boasting.    Far  from  it;  for,  on 


L 


92  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

the  contrary,  among  my  mortifications  have  been  compli- 
ments to  my  memory,  when,  in  fact,  any  compliments  that 
I  had  merited  were  due  to  the  higher  faculty  of  an  electric 
aptitude  for  seizing  analogies,  and  by  means  of  these  aerial 
pontoons  passing  over  like  lightning  from  one  topic  to  an- 
other." 

The  third  attribute,  hinted  at  in  the  closing  words 
of  that  passage,  the  third  quality  which  inspires,  is 
the  richness,  the  abundance  of  his  associations — ^using 
the  word  in  the  psychological  sense.  The  vast  knowl- 
edge stored  in  his  marvelous  memory  is  instantly 
available  at  the  first  suggestion.  He  sees  some  young 
people  dancing  an  old-fashioned  dance;  and  instantly 
all  sorts  of  suggestions,  cross-references,  experiences, 
recollections,  surmises,  and  dreams  flow  to  his  pen- 
point.  His  praise  of  Burke  may  be  applied  to  him- 
self: 

"His  great  and  peculiar  distinction  was  that  he  viewed  all 
objects  of  the  understanding  under  more  relations  than  other 
men,  and  under  more  complex  relations.  According  to  the 
multiplicity  of  these  relations,  a  man  is  said  to  have  a  large 
understanding:  according  to  their  subtlety,  a  fine  one;  and 
in  an  angelic  understanding,  all  things  would  appear  to  be 
related  to  all." 

He  seldom  repeats ;  each  thread  in  the  vast  web  of  his 
mind  seems  to  be  attached  to  a  different  set  of  other 
threads.  That  richness  of  intellect,  feebly  counter- 
parted  in  the  mind  of  each  of  us,  is  the  birthright,  we 
seem  to  feel,  of  every  human  being.  De  Quincey,  we 
conclude,  approximated  the  angelic,  the  ideal  mind. 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  93 

Knowledge,  memory,  richness  of  association:  and 
with  these  stimulating  qualities,  place  De  Quincey's 
wonderful  facility  of  expression.  Three  features  of 
it  impress  one :  its  coherence,  its  figurativeness,  and  its 
melody. 

The  coherence  of  his  writing  is  no  mere  accidental 
attribute.  He  deliberately  sought  "sequaciousness," 
as  he  called  it.  These  two  passages  indicate  his  ideal 
in  this  connection : 

"Take  any  sentence  you  please  from  Dr.  Johnson,  suppose, 
and  it  will  be  found  to  contain  a  thought — good  or  bad— 
fully  preconceived.  Whereas,  in  Burke,  whatever  may  have 
been  the  preconception,  it  receives  a  new  determination  or 
inflexion  at  every  clause  of  the  sentence.  Some  collateral 
adjunct  of  the  main  proposition,  some  temperament  or  re- 
straint, some  oblique  glance  at  its  remote  affinities,  will  in- 
variably be  found  to  attend  the  progress  of  his  sentences — 
like  the  spray  from  a  waterfall,  or  the  scintillations  from  the 
iron  under  the  blacksmith's  hammer." 

"Every  man,  as  he  walks  through  the  streets,  may  con- 
trive to  jot  down  an  independent  thought:  a  shorthand  memo- 
randum of  a  great  truth.  .  .  .  Standing  on  one  leg  you  may 
accomplish  this.  The  labor  of  composition  begins  when 
you  have  to  put  your  separate  threads  of  thought  into  a  loom ; 
to  weave  them  into  a  continuous  whole;  to  connect,  to  intro- 
duce them;  to  blow  them  out  or  expand  them;  to  carry  them 
to  a  close." 

As  for  the  figurativeness  and  the  melody  of  his 
style,  little  comment  is  necessary ;  in  reading  you  can- 
not miss  either.  Both  qualities  contribute  to  the 
effectiveness  of  his  "impassioned  prose,"  that  near- 


94  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

poetry  yet  non-poetical  kind  of  writing  which  he 
affected.  He  thought  himself  the  virtual  inventor 
of  this  form;  he  surely  stands  alone  with  Ruskin  at 
the  head  of  its  exponents. 

Such,  we  may  conclude,  is  the  basis  of  our  per- 
sistent admiration  for  De  Quincey.  The  great  writer, 
the  ne  plus  ultra  in  literature,  when  he  appears,  we 
may  conclude  further,  will  possess  these  qualities 
which  so  distinguish  De  Quincey.  He  will  possess 
along  with  a  message,  along  with  clarity,  sound 
humor,  and  sturdy  naturalness,  none  of  which  were 
De  Quincey's,  these  qualities  of  vast  knowledge  al- 
ways ready  to  hand  through  memory  and  association, 
and  of  surpassing  facility  of  expression.  It  is  hard 
to  see  how  any  writer  can  possess  these  last  inspiring 
attributes  in  a  greater  measure  than  De  Quincey  him- 
self possessed  them. 

THOMAS   CARLYLE    (1795-1881) 
Chronology 

1795  Born,  December  5,  at  Ecclefechan,  Scotland. 

1805  To  school  at  Annan. 

1809  To  Edinburgh  University  to  prepare  for  the  min- 
istry. 

1814-1818  Tutor;  Annan,  Kirkcaldy.    Decided  not  to  be- 
come a  minister. 

18 1 8  To  Edinburgh  to  study  law.     Tutoring,  reading, 
suffering. 

1 821  "Conversion,"  in  Leith  Walk,  Edinburgh.     Deter- 
mined to  write  for  a  living. 

1824  Life  of  Schiller;  translation  of  Goethe's  Wilhelm 
Meister. 

1826  Married  Jane  Baillie  Welsh.    Other  translations. 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  95 

1828-1834  At  Craigenputtock.  Magazine  articles;  pov- 
erty; work  on  Sartor;  visit  to  London.  Sartor 
Resartus  in  Eraser's  Magazine. 

1834-1881  At  5  Cheyne  Row,  Chelsea  (near  London). 
Friends — ^J.  S.  Mill,  Leigh  Hunt,  Tennyson,  Dick- 
ens, Thackeray,  Froude,  Ruskin,  Emerson. 

1857  French  Revolution.  Other  magazine  articles.  Lec- 
tures. 

1839  Chartism;  1841,  Heroes  and  Hero-Worship;  1843, 
Past  and  Present;  1845,  Letters  and  Speeches  of 
Oliver  Cromwell;  1849,  Nigger  Question;  1850, 
Latter-Day  Pamphlets;  1851,  Life  of  John  Sterl- 
ing; 1858-1865,  Frederick  the  Great. 

1866  Address  as  rector  of  Edinburgh  University,  April  2. 
Death  of  Mrs.  Carlyle. 

1874  Prussian  Order  of  Merit.  Offered  honors  by  Dis- 
raeli, Prime  Minister. 

1881  Death,  February  4.    Buried  at  Ecclefechan. 

What  is  the  real  condition  of  England  during  the 
part  of  the  nineteenth  century  we  have  been  con- 
templating? In  order  to  be  more  definite,  what  was 
its  condition,  let  us  say,  between  1820  and  1830 — 
the  decade  which  saw  produced  the  EHa  Essays,  most 
of  Hazlitt's  Table  Talk,  Bracebridge  Hall,  and  those 
charming  trifles  about  pigs  and  six  fat  persons  in  one 
coach  and  cold  razors  and  tears  for  the  dead,  the  joys 
of  opium,  of  coaching,  of  dreaming,  of  being  De 
Quincey?  Do  these  productions — they  constitute  the 
best  non-fiction  prose  writing  of  the  decade — does 
this  sort  of  reading  fairly  reflect  the  condition  and  the 
interests  of  the  English  nation? 

Let  a  few  sharp  lines  sketch  an  answer.  On  many 
a  night  during  this  decade,  we  are  assured,  one  of 


96  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

the  vehicles  which  scuttled  out  of  the  way  of  the 
Manchester  and  Glasgow  Royal  Mail  was  a  sorry 
affair,  loaded  to  the  breaking-point  with  live  stock — 
two-legged  live  stock:  London  foundlings,  poor  or- 
phans, being  disposed  of  under  contract  to  employers 
of  labor  in  northern  factories.  Last  year  the  poor 
of  Brunswick,  Maine,  cost  the  tow^n  about  sixty  cents 
per  inhabitant;  the  usual  expenditure  in  New  Eng- 
land is  about  one  dollar  per  inhabitant;  in  England 
during  this  early  decade,  the  expenditure  was  twice 
as  great  as  it  is  now  in  England,  three  times  as  great 
as  in  New  England  to-day,  five  times  as  great  as  it 
was  in  Brunswick  last  year.  And  these  figures  make 
no  allowance  for  the  change  in  the  value  of  money 
since  that  time.  A  few  years  before  1820  child  labor 
had  become  such  a  fearful  abuse  that  restrictive  meas- 
ures had  to  be  passed ;  and  during  this  decade  the  law 
forbade  employers  to  keep  children  at  work  more 
than — twelve  hours  a  day! 

What  of  all  this  do  we  find  reflected  in  the  writings 
of  the  early  nineteenth-century  essayists?  Are  such 
things  out  of  the  sphere  of  the  man  of  letters? 
Chaucer  could  write  literature  for  posterity  and  by  the 
same  lines  open  men's  eyes  to  the  clerical  and  social 
abuses  of  his  time;  Shakespeare  satisfied  the  Globe 
groundlings  and  also  developed  new  and  high  moral 
and  artistic  standards.  Milton  recorded  his  sublime 
visions  and  in  mighty  fashion  flayed  reactionaries  and 
instilled  religion  as  well.  The  greatest  men  of  letters 
may  be  said  to  have  found  their  chief  inspiration  in 
the  interests  and  problems  that  concerned  and  racked 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  97 

their  contemporaries.  Pleasant,  genial,  fascinating, 
the  men  we  have  studied  are;  we  reserve  terms  of 
greater  approbation  for  the  man  who  fascinates  even 
while  he  wrestles  with  the  ills  of  the  world  around 
him. 

Carlyle  so  wrestled.  In  1830,  the  last  year  of  our 
chosen  decade,  he  was  but  little  known.  By  1848  his 
circle  of  influence  was  wide.  It  was  in  that  year  that 
a  rich  young  man,  a  man  interested  in  all  the  con- 
ventional forms  of  literary  expression  and  having  a 
marvelous  gift  for  expressing  the  many  things  which 
he  found  significant  in  art,  John  Ruskin  by  name,  de- 
liberately turned  his  attention  to  social  conditions.  He 
had  read  Carlyle.  *'It  is  no  time  for  the  idleness  of 
metaphysics  or  the  entertainment  of  the  arts,"  he  said. 
He  became  the  most  advanced,  the  most  vigorous,  and 
the  most  effective  of  England's  social  reformers — 
continuing  at  the  same  time  to  be  one  of  her  most 
noteworthy  essayists.  American  Emerson,  who  had 
been  stirred  with  sympathy  when  he  read  Carlyle's 
earliest  writings,  wrote  of  Carlyle  in  this  same  year 
of  1848 :  ''He  thinks  it  [the  bad  times,  the  social  dis- 
content] the  only  question  for  wise  men,  instead  of 
arts  and  fine  fancies  and  poetry  and  such  things,  to 
address  themselves  to  the  problems  of  society.  This 
confusion  is  the  inevitable  end  of  such  falsehoods 
and  nonsense  as  they  have  been  embroiled  with." 

There  is  a  familiar  sound  to  us  in  this  "problem 
of  society" :  we  shall  never  be  beyond  the  circle  of 
that  sound  during  the  rest  of  the  century.  The  actual 
tones  of  Carlyle  may  not  ring  among  us  still;  but 


98  ENGLISH  ESS  A  YISTS 

sympathetic  vibrations  awakened  by  those  tones  tin- 
tinnabulate  mightily  in  English-speaking  countries  to- 
day. 

Carlyle's  development  previous  to  the  decade  we 
have  chosen  as  a  center,  need  not  detain  us  long. 
His  experiences  within  that  decade  and  during  the  few 
years  immediately  succeeding  it  contain  more  that  is 
of  significance.  And  briefly  again  we  shall  glance 
at  his  later  years. 

To  James  Carlyle,  staunch,  able  stone-mason,  sternly 
religious,  was  born  in  small,  retired  Ecclefechan  in 
southern  Scotland,  on  December  5,  1795,  a  son — 
Thomas  Carlyle.  James  Carlyle  had  wrung  from 
the  world  an  honest  but  simple  living,  had  built  in  his 
thorough  fashion  the  house  which  sheltered  his  wife 
and  child,  was  and  remained  beholden  to  no  one. 

Thomas  learned  reading  from  his  mother,  arith- 
metic from  his  father,  and  other  things  at  the  village 
school  and  in  the  study  of  the  village  minister.  At 
length,  in  1805,  he  began  to  learn  still  other  things 
at  the  grammar  school  at  Annan,  a  town  south  of 
Ecclefechan.  He  was  quick  at  learning — a  bright  boy. 
Like  every  bright  Scotch  church-member's  son,  he 
must  to  the  University  at  Edinburgh  and  become 
a  minister.  And  though  Edinburgh  was  far  and 
coach  fares  were  high,  his  pockets  would  hold  sev- 
eral days'  supply  of  oat-bread,  and  his  legs  were 
strong :  he  walked  the  one  hundred  miles,  and  entered 
the  University,  in  1809.  He  studied,  after  his  own 
fashion  doubtless,  through  the  four  years.     He  had 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  99 

friends ;  yet  we  should  hardly  have  called  him  a  "good 
mixer,"  for  he  was  nicknamed  "Dean  Jonathan," 
and  the  first  Dean  Jonathan  (Swift)  "mixed"  as  a 
pickle  does  with  candy. 

His  degree  at  length  secured,  with  honors,  it  seems, 
in  mathematics,  he  had  to  support  himself  while  he 
studied  further.  He  studied,  endured  the  grind,  and 
saved  money  as  a  tutor  or  under-teacher  in  mathe- 
matics, first  in  his  old  school  at  Annan,  later  at  an- 
other school;  meanwhile  he  complied  with  the  church 
regulations  by  preaching  two  sermons.  A  girl  at- 
tracted him,  how  strongly  one  may  see  if  he  reads 
of  Bhimine  in  Sartor  Resartiis.  He  read,  studied, 
and  thought  too  much:  he  found  that  he  could  no 
longer  conscientiously  subscribe  to  the  doctrines  of  his 
father's  church.  He  had  the  courage  to  tell  his  father 
so  at  once.  And  his  father  had  the  wisdom  which, 
in  spite  of  cherished  hopes,  could  understand  and 
approve.  Consequently  Carlyle  foreswore  the  minis- 
try as  his  calling  in  life. 

Sick  of  teaching,  wrenched  by  his  decision,  deter- 
mined somehow  to  win  his  way,  he  went  again  to 
Edinburgh  to  study  law.  The  move  was  bold,  and, 
as  it  proved,  unwise;  for  inborn  tastes  and  aversions 
quickly  did  for  the  law  as  conscience  had  done  for 
the  ministry.  What  to  do?  He  had  long  been  tor- 
tured by  dyspepsia;  there  was  only  a  bare  living  in 
the  odd  jobs  of  tutoring  available ;  the  bitter  miseries 
of  the  ignorant  and  the  poor  leered  at  him  every- 
where; the  religion,  the  life-scheme  which  he  had 
abandoned,  had  given  way  to  mere  emptiness  and  un- 


100  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

certainty.  He  thought,  as  youth  and  bravery  and 
sensitiveness  combined  have  often  thought,  of  suicide. 

We  have  reached  the  first  year  of  our  central  dec- 
ade. The  Elia  Essays  are  appearing  in  London; 
HazHtt  is  in  the  thick  of  some  glorious  quarrels; 
Irving  is  studying  Master  Simon  at  Bracebridge  Hall, 
Hunt  the  mysterious  art  of  pig-driving,  and  De 
Quincey  that  vast  collection  of  crude  literary  ma- 
terial— ^himself.  It  is  the  year,  too,  when  fierce  opium 
pains,  involuntarily  induced,  are  racking  a  hideous 
fraction  of  England's  people:  every  parish  has  its 
crowd  of  under- fed,  broken-spirited  paupers;  those 
wagons,  stuck  full  of  gaunt  children,  rumble  north- 
ward; probably  more  than  one  employer  still  disre- 
gards that  new  law  limiting  the  daily  toil  of  an  eight- 
year-old  child  to  twelve  hours. 

It  is  June  21,  1821,  a  hot  day.  Thomas  Carlyle  is 
walking  out  the  crowded  street  which  leads  to  Leith, 
the  seaport  of  Edinburgh.  He  is  not  musing  upon 
Hunt's  year-old  essay  on  A  Now.  Of  a  Hot  Day. 
All  the  burdens  of  philosophical  and  religious  un- 
certainty, all  the  injustices  and  sufferings  of  man- 
kind seem  to  press  upon  his  shoulders;  he  is  deep 
in  his  habitual  and  weary  wrestling  with  facts  and 
fate.  Truth  and  power  seem  to  lie  wholly  on  the 
side  of  suffering  and  evil  and  uselessness. 

All  at  once  he  feels  illuminated,  strong:  it  rings 
in  his  soul  that  as  for  himself  he  need  not,  will  not 
surrender  to  these  deadening  thoughts ;  he  will  believe, 
he  will  be,  he  will  do !  He  calls  it  his  new  birth.  He 
thus  describes  its  immediate  effect: 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  loi 

"Ever  from  that  time,  the  temper  of  my  misery  was 
changed:  not  Fear  or  whining  Sorrow,  but  Indignation  and 
grim  fire-eyed  Defiance. 

"Thus  had  the  Everlasting  No  pealed  authoritatively 
through  all  the  recesses  of  my  Me;  and  then  was  it  that 
my  whole  Me  stood  up,  in  naked,  God-created  majesty,  and 
with  emphasis  recorded  its  Protest.  Such  a  Protest,  the  most 
important  transaction  in  Life,  may  that  same  Indignation 
and  Defiance,  in  a  psychological  point  of  view,  be  fitly 
called.  The  Everlasting  No  had  said:  'Behold,  thou  art 
fatherless,  outcast,  and  the  Universe  is  mine  (the  Devil's)'; 
to  which  my  whole  Me  now  made  answer:  *I  am  not  thine, 
but  Free,  and  forever  hate  thee !' " 

And  the  fearful,  cheerful  struggle  of  our  decade  began. 
He  had  determined  to  do  with  his  might  what  lay 
in  him.    He  said  to  himself : 

"Be  no  longer  a  Chaos,  but  a  World,  or  even  Worldkin. 
Produce !  Produce  !  Were  it  but  the  pitifullest  infinitesimal 
fraction  of  a  Product,  produce  it,  in  God's  name!  'Tis  the 
utmost  thou  hast  in  thee :  out  with  it,  then.  Up  !  up  !  What- 
soever thy  hand  findeth  to  do,  do  it  with  thy  whole  might. 
Work  while  it  is  called  To-day;  for  the  Night  cometh, 
wherein  no  man  can  work." 

He  had  long  felt  that  there  lay  in  him,  Thomas 
Carlyle,  ideas  worth  expressing,  and  the  power  to 
write.  He  now  became  more  and  more  convinced 
that  he  could  help  solve  this  riddle  of  a  world  with 
his  ideas  and  his  writing.  True,  two  articles  already 
sent  to  magazines  had  attained  the  publicity  of  the 
waste-basket.  But  the  German  literature,  especially 
the  works  of  Schiller  and  Goethe,  which  he  had  been 


I02  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

reading,  and  which  was  known  to  few  English  people, 
seemed  to  provide  a  literary  opportunity. 

Sustenance  and  encouragement  both  came.  A  friend 
had  him  appointed  tutor  in  a  rich  and  genteel  family; 
it  was  exasperating  work  for  so  independent  a  soul 
as  Carlyle,  but  the  two  hundred  pounds  a  year  were 
worth  some  pain.  And  he  met  Jane  Baillie  Welsh, 
a  gifted  and  sprightly  girl;  correspondence  with  her 
brought  sympathy  and  inspiration.  At  last  the  London 
Magazine,  its  back  numbers  doubtless  still  in  de- 
mand for  certain  essays  signed  Elia  and  some  lurid 
Confessions  of  an  Opium-Eater,  took  Carlyle's  Life 
of  Schiller  (1823-4).  An  Edinburgh  publisher  soon 
took  his  translation  of  Goethe's  William  Meisfer 
(1824).  He  visited  Paris  with  his  patrons  and  his 
pupils;  also  London,  and  met  there  many  men  of 
letters — Gifford  and  others  like  him,  probably,  also 
Lamb  and  Hunt  and  Hazlitt.  They  seemed  to  him 
mere  triflers  (he  did  not  know  Lamb's  real  story)  ; 
he  called  them  "things  for  writing  articles.''  Dyspep- 
sia, patronage,  the  turmoil  of  ideas  within  him,  the 
unresponsiveness  of  publishers  and  people,  still  bayed 
at  him — life  was  still  hard.  But  renewed  hope  was  at 
hand:  for  Goethe  wrote  a  grateful  acknowledgment 
of  the  Meister  translation. 

No  more  of  this  hateful  tutoring,  he  said  at  last. 
Living  on  his  savings  he  translated  and  published 
German  Romances,  and  on  the  slender  proceeds  he 
married  Jane  Welsh  and  settled  in  Edinburgh.  First 
a  review  of  a  life  of  Jean  Paul  Richter,  then  other 
articles  were  accepted  by  the  Edinburgh  Review  and 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  103 

Other  magazines.  All  this  was  something;  but  it  was 
slow,  slow,  and  unremunerative.  Mrs.  Carlyle  owned 
a  farm,  Craigenputtock,  back  in  the  hills  beyond 
Dumfries.  Living,  they  concluded,  would  be  cheaper 
there  and  noises  less  numerous.  In  1828  they  moved 
to  it. 

Here  Carlyle  prepared  more  articles.  Publishers 
would  have  welcomed  them  if  prepared  or  modified 
according  to  their  suggestions,  their  plans.  But  that 
was  not  Carlyle's  way;  he  would  not  compromise  in 
matter  or  in  manner.  Nor  was  writing  in  the  ordinary 
sense  pleasurable  to  him;  he  did  not  write  buoyantly 
and  rapidly,  with  the  pen  of  a  ready  writer.  Hunt 
or  Hazlitt  would  have  struck  off  enough  to  supply  the 
printer  for  months  while  Carlyle  labored  upon  a  single 
essay;  each  article,  he  says,  was  "a  slow  product  of 
a  kind  of  mental  agony." 

And  as  this  decade  of  ours  rounded  out,  he  was  com- 
pleting (the  mental  agony  at  its  height,  we  may  be 
sure)  a  stupendous  work  which  expressed  his  now 
crystallized  ideas  and  theories  as  no  brief  magazine 
articles  could  express  them.  He  was  so  certain  of  its 
worth  that  in  person  he  took  it  up  to  the  London 
publishers.  But  no  one  would  buy.  Some  did  give 
him  commissions  for  more  conventional  articles,  and 
he  sadly  returned  to  Scotland  to  execute  them.  At 
length,  in  1833,  Fraser's  Magazine,  a  liberal  and  al- 
most anarchical  publication  of  that  day,  with  a  really 
pitiful  recompense  to  the  author  for  his  pains,  began 
to  issue  the  great  essay  serially;  and  Sartor  Resartus 
dribbled  into  the  world. 


104  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

It  met  with  no  gentle  indifference.  Subscriber  after 
subscriber  to  that  confessedly  eccentric  magazine 
begged  the  editor  to  use  for  something  valuable  the 
space  occupied  by  this  crazy  series.  Just  two  readers 
expressed  approval :  one  was  a  Catholic  priest  in  Ire- 
land; the  other  was  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson. 

The  leaven  had  begun  to  work.  The  ideas  which 
were  to  mold  John  Ruskin's  life  were  now  expressed. 
The  sympathetic  vibrations  which  still  resound  were 
being  awakened;  for  the  teachings  promulgated  by 
Carlyle  in  his  later  life  were  all  contained  in  brief  or 
in  embryo  in  the  early  periodical  essays  and  in  Sartor. 

We  may  quickly  chronicle  the  remaining  events  of 
his  life.  Conversations  with  John  Stuart  Mill  in 
London  had  turned  his  thoughts  to  the  French  Revolu- 
tion as  a  literary  topic.  London  was  the  place  to  work 
upon  that.  So  to  London,  that  is,  to  the  suburb  of 
Chelsea,  the  Carlyles  went,  bag  and  baggage,  "burn- 
ing," as  Carlyle  said,  "the  Craigenputtock  bridges  be- 
hind them."  For  three  years  he  struggled  with  the 
vast  and  greatly  misunderstood  phenomenon  he  had 
undertaken  to  interpret.  The  destruction  of  the  manu- 
script of  the  first  volume  just  after  its  completion  is 
one  of  the  tragedies  of  English  literature.  The  French 
Revolution  appeared  in  1837.  It  promptly  made 
Carlyle  famous.  He  was  asked  to  give  lectures  on 
that  and  on  other  subjects.  In  1840  came  the  last 
series  of  lectures,  expanding  a  thought  contained  in 
Sartor  Resartus,  a  series  entitled  On  Heroes  and 
Hero-Worship.  Chartism  (1839),  Past  and  Present 
(1843),  ^^^  Nigger  Question   (1849),  ^.nd  Latter- 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  105 

Day  Pamphlets  (1850)  made  applications  of  his 
fundamental  beliefs  to  current  problems.  Cromwell's 
Letters  and  Speeches  (1845)  ^^^  Frederick  the  Great 
(1857-1865)  were  studies  of  great  heroes  each  of 
whom  he  had  long  worshiped.  Each  was  produced 
after  fearful  struggles  and  suffering.  Emerson  called 
Frederick  (five  volumes)  "the  wittiest  book  ever 
written,"  and  such  is  its  completeness  and  accuracy 
that  German  military  students  used  it  as  a  text  con- 
cerning Frederick's  battles. 

The  influence  of  his  writings  is  illustrated  by  the 
fact  that  the  great  statue  of  Cromwell  near  the  Houses 
of  Parliament  in  London  was  erected  soon  after  Car- 
lyle  had  proved  the  Protector  a  protector  indeed,  and 
not  the  woiild-be  destroyer  of  Great  Britain.  Men 
often,  usually,  disagreed  with  his  conclusions  and  de- 
tested his  manner  and  attitude;  but  he  made  men 
think;  he  spoke,  as  Emerson  said,  "with  an  emphasis 
that  hindered  from  sleep'';  as  Professor  Bliss  Perry 
says,  Carlyle  put  and  puts  iron  into  men's  blood. 

With  the  completion  of  Frederick,  Carlyle  prac- 
tically ended  his  work.  Many  honors  and  sorrows 
were  yet  to  come.  The  signal  honor  of  his  life  came 
in  1865  when  he  was  chosen  to  the  very  honorable 
office  of  Rector  of  Edinburgh  University.  His  in- 
augural address,  delivered  April  2,  1866,  is  considered 
the  ripest  and  most  confident  expression  of  his  doc- 
trines which  he  ever  produced.  The  great  sorrow 
was  the  death  of  his  wife.  Mrs.  Carlyle,  long  a 
confirmed  invalid,  had  remained  behind  in  London 
when  Carlyle  went  to  Edinburgh  to  deliver  his  in- 


io6  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

augural,  and  Carlyle  now  visited  friends  in  Scotland. 
One  day  the  news  sped  northward  to  him  that  Mrs. 
Carlyle  was  dead.  Her  coachman,  turning  to  her  for 
orders  as  he  was  driving  her  about  the  city,  had 
found  her  upright  but  lifeless. 

Carlyle  was  never  his  real  self  again.  People  who 
have  read  only  Froude's  misleading  account  of  Car- 
lyle's  treatment  of  his  wife,  should  read  also  the 
section  of  Carlyle's  Reminiscences  devoted  to  her.  If 
he  had  shown  her  neglect,  he  had  also  shown  her  love 
and  devotion ;  and  for  his  neglect,  he  suffered  in  those 
later  years  as  few  souls  are  sensitive  enough  to  suffer. 

By  1870,  Carlyle  was  the  acknowledged  head  of 
English  letters.  In  1874  he  was  given  the  Prussian 
Order  of  Merit,  and  the  same  year  he  declined  Dis- 
raeli's delicate  offer  of  the  Grand  Cross  of  Bath  and 
a  generous  pension. 

Two  years  after  Mrs.  Carlyle's  death  he  had  been 
compelled  to  give  up  horseback  riding,  the  only  recrea- 
tion in  which  he  had  all  his  life  found  mental  reKef. 
By  1872,  he  was  no  longer  able  to  use  his  right  hand 
in  writing.  His  close  friends,  Ruskin,  Froude,  and 
Emerson,  did  much  to  lighten  his  last  days.  And  on 
February  4,  188 1,  he  died.  The  Dean  of  Westminster 
Abbey  offered  a  tomb  there;  but  in  accordance  with 
Carlyle's  known  wishes  this  offer  was  declined,  and 
on  a  grim,  snowy  day,  he  was  buried  among  the 
graves  of  his  peasant  kindred  in  the  little  churchyard 
at  Ecclefechan. 

What  he  accomplished  we  cannot  yet  estimate.  The 
ripples  he  set  in  motion  still  follow  one  another  over 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  107 

the  surface  of  our  life.  But  people  in  general  seem 
to  be  thinking  in  a  fashion  less  and  less  feeble,  and 
the  man  of  letters  with  no  message  has  more  and  more 
difficulty  in  selling  his  works ;  and  though  the  poor  and 
the  miserable  in  body  and  in  soul  are  yet  with  us, 
foundlings  are  in  few  places  farmed  out  to  labor 
twelve  hours  a  day  with  the  public  viewing  the  spec- 
tacle complacently — as  they  seem  to  have  viewed  it 
in  1820. 

It  should  not  be  understood  that  Carlyle  was  what 
is  called  a  practical  reformer.  Howard  had  secured  a 
measure  of  prison  reform,  Wilberforce  had  freed  all 
slaves  on  English  soil,  Dickens  was  soon  to  be  improv- 
ing school  and  workhouse  and  slum  conditions,  and 
Ruskin  at  length  would  be  exhausting  his  patrimony 
in  an  effort  to  develop  various  neglected  phases  of 
English  civilization.  Carlyle's  function  among  these 
men,  as  well  as  among  thinkers  and  workers  in  nearly 
all  branches  of  human  activity,  was  for  the  most 
part  that  of  a  philosopher,  a  seer,  a  discoverer  and 
expounder  of  fundamentals,  of  those  dynamic  con- 
ceptions upon  which  true  and  permanent  reforms  must 
be  based. 

His  inheritance  and  his  early  training,  together 
with  natural  gifts  which  no  theory  of  heredity  or 
environment  can  adequately  account  for,  constituted 
the  soil.  His  observation  and  his  wide  German  read- 
ing^ seem  to  have  furnished  the  seed.     And  the  re- 

*His  philosophy  is  largely  that  of  Fichte;  his  style  reflects 
Richter. 


io8  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

suiting  growth  represented  by  his  writings  is  perennial 
and  pervading  rather  than  annual  and  immediate  in 
its  significance. 

His  writings  as  a  whole  possess  a  singular  unity; 
there  is  oneness,  insistency  to  his  message.  Hinted, 
partially  proclaimed  in  his  earlier  essays,  pointedly 
and  vigorously  expressed  in  Sartor  Resartus,  it  re- 
sounds in  one  form  or  another  in  each  of  his  later 
works.  The  reader  of  Carlyle's  essays,  few  or  many, 
should  have  in  mind  a  definite  conception  of  this 
"message"  of  Carlyle's,  of  this  unity  of  his  writing 
as  a  whole. 

Above  all  else  Carlyle  insists  upon  looking  beyond 
the  Apparent  to  the  Real.  Clothes,  he  reiterates, 
must  not  be  mistaken  for  the  Man;  forms, — in  gov- 
ernment, in  ecclesiastical  matters,  in  the  intellectual 
fields  of  history  and  science — must  be  distinguished 
from  the  essence — ^the  State,  Religion,  God. 

In  looking  beyond  the  Apparent,  Carlyle  thought  he 
saw  one  great  neglected  fact  concerning  mankind. 
It  was  the  reverence  which  men  universally  exhibit 
for  Heroes,  for  those  God-given,  God-endowed  spirits 
whom  to  discover  and  to  follow,  he  considered,  is  the 
chief  business  of  all  other  men.  This  fact  he  found 
dominant  in  all  past  history  as  well  as  in  sore  con- 
temporary needs. 

Yet  another  important  fact  he  thought  significant  of 
his  time — the  power  exerted  by  the  press  and  by  men 
of  letters.  He  spoke  of  letters  as  constituting  a  virtual 
religion,  with  something  of  a  liturgy  of  its  own,  and 


I 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  109 

with  priests  in  its  able  and  conscientious  writers.  Upon 
heroes,  in  great  measure  upon  heroic  men  of  letters, 
he  felt,  depended  the  salvation  of  mankind  from  the 
forces  so  insistently  working  its  destruction. 

This  was  a  bold,  an -awaketiing  declaration.  As 
pronounced  by  Carlyle  it  compelled  attention.  It  op- 
posed complacency  and  tacit  unthinking  acceptance  on 
every  side,  and  consequently  brought  upon  Carlyle  not 
only  opposition  but  ridicule  and  even  hatred.  It  de- 
termined his  own  career  and  the  nature  of  his  writings. 
It  led  him  to  make  and  to  present  studies  of  heroes; 
concerning  two  of  the  characters  he  treated,  Mahomet 
and  Cromwell,  he  is  acknowledged  to  have  reversed 
the  accepted  view,  for  neither  has  since  been  regarded 
as  a  dupe. 

Carlyle' s  fundamental  conceptions  led  him  also  to 
discredit  numerous  practical  and  popular  reforms: 
the  extension  of  suffrage,  the  American  "experiments" 
in  democracy,  even  the  amelioration  of  prison  con- 
ditions and  the  emancipation  of  slaves.  Carlyle  was 
led  not  so  much  to  deny  the  need  and  the  advantage 
of  these  changes  as  to  emphasize  their  utter  inadequacy 
for  purposes  of  ultimate  reform. 

Carlyle's  specific  teachings  have  not  been  accepted. 
Little,  moreover,  of  the  destruction  that  Carlyle  fore- 
told as  the  penalty  for  their  non-acceptance,  has  yet 
come  to  pass.  Much  has  occurred  to  indicate,  on  the 
contrary,  that  he  was  probably  wrong  in  many  of  the 
applications  of  his  doctrines  to  practical  affairs.  Yet 
there  is  perhaps  not  one  of  his  dicta  which  can  be 
said  to  be  disproved.     And  his  great  principle,  the 


I. 


"O  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

keynote  of  his  message,  the  need  of  looking  ever  be- 
yond the  apparent  to  the  real,  is  one  which  the  world 
cannot  safely  forget,  and  one  which  it  should  ever 
honor  Carlyle  for  proclaiming. 

It  is  obvious  that  the  essays  of  Carlyle  are  far  from 
identical  in  nature  with  those  of  the  first  essayist, 
Montaigne.  The  spirit  of  Carlyle  obviously  would 
not  suffer  the  placing  of  chief  emphasis  upon  "house 
and  barns  .  .  .  father  .  .  .  wife  .  .  .  tenants 
...  old  lean  bald  pate  .  .  .  knives  and  forks, 
etc.**  It  would  be  difficult  to  construct  any  of  these 
features  of  Carlyle*s  experience  from  what  he  writes 
in  his  essays.  There  is  but  one  element  of  marked 
similarity  between  them — their  sincerity  and  inde- 
pendence. Whereas  these  qualities  made  Montaigne 
refuse  to  generalize  and  prophesy,  they  induced  Car- 
lyle to  do  that  and  nothing  else. 

Consequently  in  reading  Montaigne  one  thinks 
primarily  of  Montaigne,  incidentally  of  the  subject 
discussed ;  in  reading  Carlyle  one  thinks  for  the  most 
part  incidentally  of  Carlyle,  primarily  of  the  subject 
discussed.  The  essay  in  his  hands  became  consist- 
ently what  it  had  been  intermittently  among  eight- 
eenth-century essayists — obj  ecti  ve. 

One  species  of  the  objective  essay  was  developed 
masterfully  by  Carlyle  and  his  contemporaries.  This 
was  the  so-called  book  review.  Book  reviews  had  ap- 
peared steadily  in  English  periodicals  ever  since  the 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  m 

first  number  of  Works  of  the  Learned^  in  1681. 
Eighteenth-century  reviews,  for  the  most  part  the 
work  of  hack-writers,  had  often,  strange  to  say, 
aroused  great  attention  and  had  developed  bitter  ani- 
mosity and  recrimination.  Very  few  of  the  reviews 
previous  to  the  nineteenth  century,  however,  had  any 
permanent  Hterary  significance. 

In  1802,  the  first  number  of  the  Edinburgh  Review 
appeared.  This  magazine  included  book  reviews  pre- 
pared after  a  new  and  better  fashion.  The  founders, 
Francis  Jeffrey,  Sydney  Smith,  and  Lord  Brougham, 
had  determined  that  their  contributors  should  not  be 
mere  hacks;  they  were  to  be  well  paid,  and  to  be 
selected  for  their  real  knowledge  of  the  subject-matter 
treated  in  the  book  or  books  reviewed. 

Numerous  memorable  essays  have  been  the  result. 
Each  is  less  a  minute  consideration  of  a  given  book 
than  a  disquisition  of  independent  and  permanent 
value  on  the  subject  represented  by  the  book.  The 
book  suggested  to  the  author  of  the  review  an  objective 
essay  of  his  own. 

Carlyle's  miscellaneous  essays,  many  of  them,  are 
of  this  sort.  Even  Sartor  Resartus  is  ostensibly  a 
lengthy  review  of  a  (fictitious)  German  work.  Ma- 
caulay's  fame  as  an  essayist  depends  almost  wholly 
upon  book  reviews  of  the  Edinburgh  Review  type. 

This  species  of  objective  essay  quite  naturally  led 
to  the  wide  production  of  essays  not  even  ostensibly 
book  reviews,  but  dealing  with  events  or  ideas  re- 

*An  imitation  of  the  Journal  des  savants,  first  published  in 
France  in  1665. 


112  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

garded  by  the  writer  as  significant.  Independent  treat- 
ments, not  comprehensive,  usually  discursive,  dis- 
tinct from  romance  and  poetry  and  from  utilitarian 
writing,  were  the  result.  The  essays  of  Emerson,  of 
Cardinal  Newman,  and  of  Lowell  are  examples. 

Of  course  it  is  not  alone  the  brevity,  the  discursive- 
ness, the  non-utilitarian  quality  of  these  writings  which 
entitles  them  to  be  classed  as  essays.  There  is  in 
each  still  a  subjective  element.  Carlyle  and  Macaulay 
and  Newman,  though  not  the  main  objects  of  interest 
in  any,  are  nevertheless  severally  present  and  observ- 
able in  each  essay.  Though  no  longer  "painted"  in  his 
essays,  the  writer  may  be  said  to  be  silhouetted  there. 
The  objective  essay  is  thus  not  wholly  distinct  from  the 
subjective;  Montaigne  and  Emerson  are  justly  classed 
together  as  essayists. 

With  this  conception  of  the  objective  essay  and  its 
relation  to  the  subjective,  the  reader  is  prepared  to 
peruse  intelligently  the  essays  of  Carlyle  and  of  the 
"objective"  essayists  who  followed  him. 

THOMAS  BABINGTON  MACAULAY   (1800-1859) 
Chronology 
1800  Born,  October  25,  at  Rothley  Temple,  Leicester- 
shire.    Precocity;   memory;   writing. 
1 81 8  To    Trinity    College,    Cambridge.      Speeches    at 
Union.     Prizes. 

1824  Student  at  Gray's  Inn,    Speech,  anti-slavery  meet- 

ing. 

1825  Milton  essay  in  Edinburgh  Review. 

1826  Admitted  to  bar. 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  113 

1830  Elected  to  Parliament.  Speeches  on  removal  of 
Jewish  disabilities,  Reform  Bill,  etc. 

1833-1838  Member  of  supreme  council  of  India.  Aid 
in  founding  educational  system,  criminal  code, 
etc.  Active  in  Parliament  on  return  to  England; 
writing. 

1842  Lays  of  Ancient  Rome.     1843,   Collected  Essays. 

1848-1855  History  of  England  (4  volumes;  incomplete). 

1849  Lord  Rector  of  University  of  Glasgow. 

1857  Made  Baron  Macaulay  of  Rothley. 

1859  Death  at  home  in  Kensington.  Buried  at  foot  of 
Addison's  statue  in  Westminster  Abbey. 

Macaulay  is  the  only  important  nineteenth  century 
essayist  who  consistently  participated  in  public  affairs, 
and  the  only  one  who  is  buried  in  Westminster  Abbey. 
The  distinction  which  he  attained  in  Parliamentary 
and  Cabinet  positions  seemed  to  come  with  very  little 
effort  on  his  part.  And  the  honor  of  a  tomb  in  the 
great  Abbey,  although  offered  in  the  face  of  opposi- 
tion in  the  case  of  Carlyle  and  in  that  of  Ruskin,  was 
universally  accepted  as  the  meed  of  this  popular  essay- 
ist, orator,  poet,  historian,  and  publicist.  Son  of  a 
comparatively  obscure  government  official,  he  had  be- 
come at  twenty-five  years  of  age  an  able  essayist,  at 
thirty  years  a  speaker  and  legislator  of  mark,  at 
forty-two  a  popular  poet,  at  forty-eight  a  distinguished 
historian,  at  fifty-seven  a  peer  of  the  realm  heaped 
with  honors  and  acclaimed  with  gratitude  and  admira- 
tion wherever  he  went,  whenever  he  spoke.  Surely  a 
brilliant  career. 

Zachary  Macaulay,  the  father  of  Thomas  Babing- 
ton  Macaulay,  had  been  a  clerk  in  a  plantation  in  the 


"4  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

West  Indies,  later  the  virtual  governor  of  the  negro 
colony  of  Sierra  Leone  in  Africa;  and  at  the  time  of 
Macaulay's  birth,  on  October  25,  1800,  was  in  Eng- 
land as  secretary  of  the  company  in  charge  of  Sierra 
Leone  colony.  He  later  became  prominent  in  the 
movement  to  free  all  the  slaves  in  the  British  Empire. 
He  was  an  active,  ardent,  well-informed  man,  with 
literary  tastes  but  no  marked  literary  ability. 

The  versatility  and  zeal  of  the  father  descended  in 
increased  measure  upon  Macaulay.  At  three  he  read 
incessantly.  It  was  an  unusual  and  a  bookish  chifd 
which  spoke  the  things  recorded  of  him.  He  was 
not  yet  five  years  old,  it  is  said,  when  after  a  servant 
had  spilled  some  hot  coffee  over  his  legs  he  said  in 
reply  to  his  hostess's  tender  inquiry:  "Thank  you, 
madam,  the  agony  is  abated."  At  about  the  same  age, 
a  housemaid  threw  away  as  rubbish  some  shells  with 
which  the  child  Macaulay  had  marked  out  a  plot  of 
ground  behind  the  house;  when  Macaulay  found  it 
out,  he  rushed  into  the  drawing-room  and  said 
solemnly  to  those  present:  "Cursed  be  Sally;  for  it 
is  written.  Cursed  is  he  that  removeth  his  neighbor's 
landmark."  At  seven  years  of  age  he  composed  a 
compendium  of  universal  history.  Scott's  Lay  of  the 
Last  Minstrel  and  Marmion  he  promptly  had  by 
heart.  In  later  life  he  reproduced  obscure  verses 
which  he  had  seen  but  once  as  a  boy ;  he  felt  confident 
that  if  all  the  copies  of  Pilgrim's  Progress  and  Para- 
dise Lost  should  disappear,  he  could  reproduce  them 
in  toto.  All  this  early  display  of  marvelous  ability 
seems  not  to  have  interfered  with  his  boyish  enjoy- 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  115 

ment  of  life;  and  his  parents  never  undeceived  him  in 
thinking  that  all  boys  had  such  powers.  It  is  little 
wonder  that  at  school,  which  he  began  to  attend  in 
18 12,  and  later  (after  18 18)  at  Trinity  College,  Cam- 
bridge, he  won  honors  and  prizes  of  all  sorts. 

His  fellowship  at  Trinity  (1824),  and  his  admis- 
sion to  the  bar  after  a  period  of  study  at  Gray's  Inn, 
in  1826,  are  events  of  little  importance  to  us.  That  he 
spoke  in  mature  and  praiseworthy  fashion  at  an  Anti- 
Slavery  Society  meeting  in  1824  is  of  greater  impor- 
tance. And  the  acceptance  of  his  essay  on  Milton  by 
Jeffrey  for  the  Edinburgh  Review  in  1825  is  signifi- 
cant as  a  leap  into  publicity  and  honored  prominence. 

Notable  speeches  were  given  by  him  at  frequent  in- 
tervals from  the  time  when  he  was  first  elected  to 
Parliament  in  1830  until  he  finally  retired  from  it  in 
1857.  The  political  and  legislative  activity  which 
these  speeches  indicate  did  not,  however,  prevent  him 
from  producing  thirty-seven  scholarly  and  altogether 
notable  essays  between  1825  and  1845,  his  famous 
Lays  of  Ancient  Rome  in  1842,  and  five  volumes  of 
his  History  of  England  between  1848  and  the  time 
of  his  death.  Enough  is  indicated  concerning  his  popu- 
larity as  an  author  by  the  fact  that  his  Lays  and  his 
History  sold  as  widely  as  the  poems  of  Byron  and 
Scott  and  the  novels  of  Scott  and  Dickens. 

He  held  important  ofBces  in  England.  He  also 
held  office  in  India  where  he  helped  found  the  educa- 
tional system  of  the  Indian  Empire,  and  where  a  code 
of  criminal  law  and  criminal  procedure  prepared  by 
him  in  1837  was  later  adopted.    This  last  is  all  the 


ii6  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

more  remarkable  because  as  a  lawyer  he  had  con- 
ducted but  a  single,  insignificant  case.  On  the  voyage 
home  from  India,  characteristically  enough,  in  1838, 
he  learned  German. 

In  politics  a  Whig,  he  favored  the  Reform  Bill 
(183 1 ),  the  repeal  of  the  Corn  Laws  (1845),  ^^^  ^ 
bill  for  limiting  the  labor  of  young  persons  in  factories 
to  ten  hours  a  day  (1846)  ;  but  he  opposed  the  ex- 
tension of  copyright  privileges  to  sixty  years  (1841) 
and  the  People's  Charter  ( 1842).  Early  in  his  career, 
his  inflexibly  independent  principles  kept  him  from 
remunerative  offices,  and  on  one  occasion  he  sold  his 
University  medals  to  raise  money  for  current  expenses 
(1831).  He  went  down  to  defeat  at  an  election  in 
Edinburgh  rather  than  give  pledges  to  the  voters  as 
to  his  legislative  conduct.  His  vast  success  in  public 
life,  in  other  words,  seems  never  to  have  been  attained 
at  the  sacrifice  of  a  single  principle  or  scruple. 

Macaulay*s  method  of  composition  is  indicated  by 
the  following  quotation  from  Trevelyan's  Life: 

"As  soon  as  he  had  got  into  his  head  all  the  informa- 
tion relating  to  any  particular  episode  in  his  History  (such, 
for  instance,  as  Argyle's  expedition  to  Scotland,  or  the  at- 
tainder of  Sir  John  Fenwick,  or  the  calling  in  of  the  dipt 
coinage),  he  would  sit  down  and  write  off  the  whole  story 
at  a  headlong  pace;  sketching  the  outlines  under  the  genial 
and  audacious  impulse  of  a  first  conception;  and  securing  in 
black  and  white  each  idea,  and  epithet,  and  turn  of  phrase, 
as  it  flowed  straight  from  his  busy  brain  to  his  rapid  fingers. 
.  .  .  except  when  at  his  best,  he  never  would  work  at  all. 

"  1  had  no  heart  to  write,'  he  says  in  his  journal  of  March 
6,  1851.    1  am  too  self-indulgent  in  this  matter,  it  may  be: 


i 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  117 

and  yet  I  attribute  much  of  the  success  which  I  have  had 
to  my  habit  of  writing  only  when  I  am  in  the  humor,  and 
of  stopping  as  soon  as  the  thoughts  and  words  cease  to  flow 
fast.  There  are,  therefore,  few  lees  in  my  wine.  It  is  all 
the  cream  of  the  bottle.' " 

While  still  but  a  middle-aged  man  he  was  seized  with 
heart  trouble.  And  on  December  28,  1859,  a  sudden 
attack  came  as  he  sat  in  his  library  chair  with  the  first 
number  of  Thackeray's  Cornhill  Magazine  open  on  his 
lap;  so  his  relatives  found  him,  dead. 

The  success  and  versatility  of  this  man  in  life, 
the  wide  sale  of  his  works  even  to  this  day,  are  weighty 
claims  upon  our  attention  and  respect.  He  was  truly 
and  highly  interesting,  fascinating,  and  admirable. 
Why  may  we  not  class  him  among  the  greatest  of 
nineteenth-century  essayists  ? 

Primarily,  it  may  be  maintained,  because  though  not 
untruthful,  he  lacked  that  highest  passion  for  truth 
which  dominates  the  greatest  men.  With  him  effec- 
tiveness— secured  through  charming  presentation, 
through  disregard  of  what  seemed  to  be  non-essentials, 
through  stressing  and  suppressing  just  a  little  here  and 
there — effectiveness  tends  to  supplant  faithfulness  to 
facts.  One  cannot  fancy  him,  supposing  that  people 
had  disapproved  of  that  early  Milton  essay,  persisting, 
as  Carlyle  did,  in  writing  what  and  after  what  fashion 
he  felt  inwardly  impelled  to  write:  he  would  have 
changed  subject  and  style  just  a  little.  He  disre- 
garded, or  else  never  saw  at  all,  those  features  of  his 
vision  which  would  go  down  hard  with  people  in  gen- 


n8  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

eral.  He  made  a  hero  out  of  no  villain,  as  Carlyle 
did  with  Cromwell;  on  the  contrary,  he  rather  jusli- 
fied  the  prevailing  and  somewhat  mistaken  attitude 
toward  James  II  and  the  English  Revolutionists. 

Mr.  Frederic  Harrison  points  out  a  striking  example 
of  these  fundamental  weaknesses  of  Macaulay;  it  is 
the  passage  from  his  essay  on  Von  Ranke's  History 
of  the  Popes  describing  the  venerability  of  the  Papacy 
as  an  institution.  The  extent  of  its  dominions  and  the 
comparative  ephemeralness  of  other  human  institutions 
are  dwelt  upon  by  Macaulay  in  a  paragraph  beginning 
and  ending  with  these  words: 

"There  is  not,  and  there  never  was  on  this  earth,  a  work 
of  human  policy  so  well  deserving  of  examination  as  the 
Roman  Catholic  Church.  .  .  .  And  she  may  still  exist  in 
undiminished  vigor  when  some  traveller  from  New  Zealand 
shall,  in  the  midst  of  a  vast  solitude,  take  his  stand  on  a 
broken  arch  of  London  Bridge  to  sketch  the  ruins  of  St. 
Paul's." 

After  dwelling  upon  the  force,  the  surpassing 
literary  beauty  and  effectiveness  of  the  passage,  Mr. 
Harrison  turns  to  the  successive  comparisons  instituted 
by  Macaulay  and  says: 

"The  passage,  though  a  truism  to  all  thoughtful  men, 
was  a  striking  novelty  to  English  Protestants  fifty  years  ago. 
But  it  will  hardly  bear  a  close  scrutiny  of  these  sweeping, 
sharp-edged,  'cock-sure'  dogmas  of  which  it  is  composed. 
The  exact  propositions  it  contains  may  be  singly  accurate; 
but  as  to  the  most  enduring  'work  of  human  policy,'  it  is  fair 
to  remember  the  Civil  Law  of  Rome  has  a  continuous  history 
of  at  least  twenty- four  centuries;  that  the  Roman  Empire 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  119 

from  Augustus  to  the  last  Constantine  in  New  Rome  en- 
dured for  fifteen  centuries;  and  from  Augustus  to  the  last 
Hapsburg  it  endured  for  eighteen  centuries.  There  is  a 
certain  ambiguity  between  the  way  in  which  Macaulay  alter- 
nates between  the  Papacy  and  the  Christian  Church,  which 
are  not  at  all  the  same  thing.  The  Papacy,  as  a  European  or 
cosmical  institution,  can  hardly  be  said  to  have  more  than 
twelve  centuries  of  continuous  history  on  the  stage  of  the 
world.  The  religious  institutions  of  Confucius  and  Buddha 
have  twice  that  epoch;  and  the  religion  and  institutions  of 
Moses  have  thirty  centuries;  and  the  Calif  ate  in  some  form 
or  other  is  nearly  coeval  with  the  Papacy.  The  judicious 
eulogist  has  guarded  himself  against  denying  in  words  any 
of  these  facts;  but  a  cool  survey  of  universal  history  will 
somewhat  blunt  the  edge  of  Macaulay's  trenchant  phrases." 

Viewing  the  whole  essay  in  a  broader  way,  Mr. 
Harrison  says  again: 

"But,  unfortunately,  Macaulay,  having  stated  in  majestic 
antitheses  his  problem  of  'the  unchangeable  Church,*  makes 
no  attempt  to  provide  us  with  a  solution.  This  splendid  eulo- 
gium  is  not  meant  to  convert  us  to  Catholicism — very  far 
from  it.  Macaulay  was  no  Catholic,  and  had  only  a  sort  of 
literary  admiration  for  the  Papacy.  As  Mr.  Cotter  Morison 
has  shown,  he  leaves  the  problem  just  where  he  found  it, 
and  such  theories  as  he  offers  are  not  quite  trustworthy.  He 
does  not  suggest  that  the  Catholic  Church  is  permanent  be- 
cause it  possesses  truth;  but,  rather,  because  men's  ideas  of 
truth  are  a  matter  of  idiosyncrasy  or  digestion.  The  whole 
essay  is  not  a  very  safe  guide  to  the  history  of  Protestantism 
or  of  Catholicism." 

The  contrast  between  Macaulay  and  Carlyle  is  quite 
clearly  seen  in  the  essays  written  by  the  two  men  On 
History.    Macaulay's  appeared  in  the  Edinburgh  Re- 


120  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

view  in  1828,  Carlyle's  in  Fraser's  Magazine  in  1830. 
Each  writer  had  already  had  some  successful  experi- 
ence in  writing,  each  was  destined  in  a  few  years  to 
do  some  notable  historical  writing  in  accordance  with 
the  ideas  expressed  in  his  essay. 

Each  author  considers  that  history  in  its  final  analy- 
sis is  philosophy  teaching  by  examples.  But  whereas 
Macaulay  assumes  that  the  ability  to  prognosticate 
political  events  may  be  attained  through  a  study  of 
history,  Carlyle  regards  this  practical  end  as  visionary, 
as  an  ideal  probably  forever  unattainable.  Macaulay 
encourages  the  historian  through  the  exercise  of  his 
reasoning  and  his  imaginative  powers  to  attempt  to 
convey  a  reduced  but  still  accurate  picture  of  some  re- 
mote period.  Carlyle  warns  the  historian  against  at- 
tempting to  portray  any  but  the  smallest  sections. 

Macaulay  insists  that  the  historian  must  above  all 
possess  this  combination  of  reasoning  power  and 
imaginative  ability;  Carlyle  urges  the  historian  to  de- 
velop first  of  all  an  understanding  of  the  stupendous- 
ness  and  of  the  essential  impossibility  of  his  task,  a 
consciousness  of  the  whole  course  of  history  in  the 
light  of  which  he  may  depict  his  small  section  of  time. 
Most  distinctive  of  all,  Macaulay  says  that  history 
must  be  interesting  as  well  as  true,  and  compares  it 
to  the  work  of  novelists  and  dramatists ;  while  Carlyle 
dismisses  the  question  of  interestingness  as  superficial. 

Thus,  whereas  Carlyle  leaves  with  the  reader  the 
impression  that  the  past  is  awe- full,  such  as  to  inspire 
reverence  and  humility,  Macaulay  leaves  with  him  the 
impression  that  the  past  is  merely  baffling  and  difficult 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  121 

to  comprehend.  Carlyle's  essay  is  awakening,  stimu- 
lating, the  message,  one  feels,  of  a  seer;  Macaulay^s 
essay  presents  the  ordinary  view  in  clear,  exquisite, 
convincing  form. 

Emerson  puts  very  strongly  the  whole  aspect  of 
Macaulay,  of  which  his  essay  on  history  is  but  a  single 
expression,  in  a  passage  in  English  Traits,  a  work 
written  when  Macaulay  was  at  the  height  of  his 
power  and  popularity : 

"The  brilliant  Macaulay,  who  expresses  the  tone  of  the 
English  governing  classes  of  the  day,  explicitly  teaches  that 
good  means  good  to  eat,  good  to  wear,  material  commodity; 
that  the  glory  of  modern  philosophy  is  its  direction  on  'fruit'; 
to  yield  economical  inventions;  and  that  its  merit  is  to  avoid 
ideas,  and  avoid  morals.  He  thinks  it  the  distinctive  merit 
of  the  Baconian  philosophy,  in  its  triumph  over  the  old  Pla- 
tonic, its  disentangling  the  intellect  from  theories  of  the  all- 
fair  and  all-Good,  and  pinning  it  down  to  the  making  a 
better  sick-chair  and  a  better  wine-whey  for  an  invalid;  this 
not  ironically,  but  in  good  faith;  that  'solid  advantage,*  as 
he  calls  it,  meaning  always  sensual  benefit,  is  the  only  good. 
The  eminent  benefit  of  astronomy  is  the  better  navigation  it 
creates,  to  enable  the  fruit-ships  to  bring  home  their  lemons 
and  wine  to  the  London  grocer.  It  was  a  curious  result, 
in  which  the  civility  and  religion  of  England  for  a  thousand 
years  ends  in  denying  morals,  and  reducing  the  intellect  to 
a  saucepan." 

Enough  has  now  been  said  concerning  what  Macau- 
lay is  not.  That  the  reader  needs  to  be  on  his  guard, 
can  withstand  some  derogatory  criticism,  will  appear 
the  moment  he  begins  to  read  from  this  brilliant  man's 
works.     Macaulay's  careful  yet  not  obtrusive  struc- 


122  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

ture,  his  utilization  of  vivid  details,  and  his  employ- 
ment of  suspense,  of  climax,  or  repetition,  of  verbal 
ornament,  will  ever  create  a  valiant  and  well- fortified 
Macaulay  following.  His  mode  of  expression,  all  will 
freely  grant,  is  a  safer  model  than  Carlyle's.  It  is 
said  that  all  our  best  newspaper  and  magazine  writ- 
ing to-day  follows  examples  set  by  Macaulay.  And 
if  we  may  not  depend  upon  him  for  absolute  and  final 
dicta  nor  yet  for  a  stimulus  to  great  or  new  thoughts, 
we  may  still  read  him  as  a  nineteenth-century  essayist 
of  brilliance,  fluency,  and  charm. 

JOHN  HENRY  NEWMAN    (1801-1890) 
Chronology 
1801  Born,  February  21,  in  London. 
1816  "Conversion." 

1 816  To  Trinity  College,  Oxford.  1818,  Trinity  scholar- 
ship. Encyclopedia  MetropoUtana  articles. 
Friends — churchmen. 

1827  Preacher  at  Whitehall,  public  examiner  in  classics. 

1828  Vicar  of  St.  Mary's  Church,  Oxford. 

1832  Trip   to   southern   Europe.     Lead,   Kindly   Light 

(1833). 

1834-1841  Tracts  for   the   Times;   Oxford   Movement. 

1843  Resigned  living  at  St.  Mary's. 

1845  Received  into  Roman  Catholic  Church.    Preaching 

and  lecturing. 
185 1  Lost  suit  occasioned  by  exposing  apostate  monk, 

Achilli.     Public  support  of  his  cause. 
1854  Rector  of  new  Catholic  University,  Dublin. 
1854  Controversy  with  Charles  Kingsley:  Apologia  pro 

vita  sua. 
1874  Controversy  with  Gladstone :    Letter  to  the  Duke  of 

Norfolk, 


I 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  123 

1877  Elected  honorary  fellow  of  Trinity  College. 
1879  Created  Cardinal. 
1890  Died,  August  11. 


Of  the  merely  interesting  which  tired  minds  crave, 
there  is  little  in  the  works  of  John  Henry,  Cardinal 
Newman.  Yet  an  account  of  the  nineteenth  century 
would  be  vastly  incomplete  with  him  omitted,  just  as 
an  account  of  life  would  be  incomplete  if  it  omitted 
the  things  with  which  Newman's  life  was  chiefly 
concerned  and  for  which  in  literature  he  stands.  It 
is  well  to  emphasize  the  distinguishing  feature  of  New- 
man among  essayists. 

We  have  seen  that  the  nineteenth-century  essayists 
previous  to  Carlyle  were  men  aloof  from  life,  men  who 
for  the  most  part  took  little  cognizance  of  contem- 
porary problems  and  struggles,  men  whose  works  we 
may  search  almost  in  vain  for  any  definite  reflection  of 
what  in  the  early  nineteenth  century  men  of  England 
and  America  were  seriously  discussing.  In  contrast 
to  these  men,  we  saw  Carlyle  early  in  life  painfully 
examining  the  signs  of  the  times,  determining  as  best 
he  could  the  needs  which  they  indicated,  and  striving 
mightily  to  do  his  part  as  a  man  of  letters  in  meeting 
those  needs.  We  saw  Macaulay  giving,  during  most 
of  his  life,  only  his  spare  hours  to  literature,  and  tak- 
ing the  part  of  a  statesman  in  dealing  with  slavery, 
with  political  reform,  with  India,  Ireland,  copyright, 
and  so  on. 

We  shall  now  find  this  participating  spirit,  new  to 
essayists  of  the  nineteenth  century,  exemplified  in  John 


124  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

Henry,  later  Cardinal,  Newman;  we  shall  find  that 
the  special  field  in  which  circumstances  and  natural 
capacity  led  him  to  labor  was  that  of  religion,  of 
churches  and  theology.  Newman  was  more  than  a 
preacher,  more  than  a  theologian;  but  we  find  in  his 
religious  thinking  and  activities  the  source  and  secret 
of  all  that  is  interesting  in  his  life  and  powerful  in 
his  writings. 

Most  people,  doubtless,  do  not  consider  at  all  the 
respective  merits  of  different  creeds.  Of  those  who 
are  inclined  to  weigh  and  choose,  to  abandon  one  creed 
in  favor  of  another,  most  doubtless  come  to  conclude 
with  Stevenson  that  to  do  so  would  be  to  change 
"only  words  for  other  words,"  and  are  satisfied  with 
him  "by  some  brave  reading  to  embrace  it  [the  old] 
in  spirit  and  truth,  and  find  wrong  as  wrong  for  me 
as  for  the  best  of  other  communions."  Newman 
was  different.  To  him  this  affair  of  churches  and 
religion  was  inseparably  bound  up  with  life,  indeed 
the  chief  concern  of  life.  One  cannot  imagine  New- 
man writing  Macaulay's  cold,  impartial  sketch  of  the 
Papacy.  To  stand  off  and  look  at  that  subject  as 
Macaulay  did,  to  be  concerned  so  wholly  with  out- 
ward manifestations — numbers,  progress,  checks,  pros- 
pects— would  have  been  for  him  as  unnatural  as  at 
the  Day  of  Judgment  to  examine  the  material  and 
workmanship  of  Gabriel's  trumpet  or  to  observe  the 
size  and  the  disposition  of  the  cohorts  of  the  heavenly 
host.  Newman  from  a  child  was  of  such  temper  and 
mental  attitude  that  he  would  first  have  considered 
the  credentials  of  Gabriel  and  the  cohorts,  then  would 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  125 

have  sought  to  understand  their  message  in  all  its 
phases,  and  finally  would  have  vied  with  the  holiest 
saint  in  sincere  worship  and  intelligent  service  of  the 
Almighty. 

Macaulay  accepted  the  religion  which  he  had  in- 
herited, and  while  he  wrote  enthusiastically  of  an 
alien  religion,  continued  placidly  and  regularly  to  at- 
tend his  parish  church.  Newman  from  the  first  ex- 
amined the  tenets  of  his  native  religion,  sought  to 
establish  them  firmly  wherever  he  found  them  weak, 
and  at  length,  in  middle  age,  finding  that  impossible, 
gave  up  position,  friends,  followers,  and  reputation, 
and  publicly  vowed  allegiance  to  what  he  had  then 
come  to  believe  the  true  guide  in  faith  and  worship. 

Newman  and  Carlyle  present  a  strange  and  in- 
teresting contrast.  They  were  alike  in  many  respects. 
Each  was  thoughtful,  serious,  analytically  and  specu- 
latively religious  by  nature;  each  as  a  young  man  ex- 
perienced what  he  called  a  conversion — a  vast  up- 
heaval of  spiritual  consciousness  which  gave  form  and 
character  to  his  entire  life.  There  the  similarity  ends. 
Carlyle  settled  his  beliefs  once  for  all ;  they  were  con- 
cerned with  broad  principles  only:  "The  world  is  not 
the  Devil's,"  he  said  to  himself,  "but  God's.  Thy 
proper  pursuit  is  not  happiness,  but  work — the  best 
that  lieth  in  thee.  The  learned,  the  strong,  the  gifted — 
they  are  those  appointed  to  lead  mankind.  Forth  in 
this  faith,  strive,  fight,  lead!"  Newman  also  deter- 
mined certain  broad  principles — the  oneness  of  God 
and  truth,  the  church  God's  instrument  in  the  world; 
but  most  of  his  life  was  spent  in  defending  details  of 


126  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

his  beliefs — the  Anglican  Church,  its  doctrines,  its 
ritual;  later,  the  Catholic  Church,  and  the  superiority 
of  its  claims. 

Carlyle  recognized  the  church  as  a  vesture;  he  ac- 
knowledged its  importance  as  such,  possessed  himself 
of  the  reality  which  it  clothed,  and  never  bothered 
to  enfold  himself  in  that  vesture,  to  maintain  it  in 
wholeness  and  beauty  by  attending  or  supporting  any 
church  institution.  Newman,  too,  recognized  the 
church  as  a  vesture,  but  as  such  indispensable,  the 
prime  concern  of  all  earnest  men,  to  be  perfected,  puri- 
fied, glorified.  Carlyle  may  be  considered  the  acme  of 
pious  dissent,  Newman  the  acme  of  intelligent  con- 
formity. 

Distinguished  from  ordinary  men  of  letters  by  his 
seriousness  and  sincerity,  from  Macaulay  by  the  one- 
ness, the  integrity  of  his  intellectual  and  his  religious 
faculties,  and  from  Carlyle  by  the  different  practical 
bearing  of  his  whole-souled  convictions,  it  was  a  life 
of  struggle,  of  bitterness,  that  Newman  had  to  live. 
The  term  applied  to  a  man  who  forsakes  his  religion  is 
apostate;  it  is  almost  as  reproachful  and  contemptuous 
as  deserter  or  traitor.  And  even  wheUxWe  remember 
that  him  whom  George  III  called  traitor,  others  called 
patriot,  that  an  apostate  to  one  religion  is  the  welcome 
convert  to  another,  we  know  that  in  both  cases  heart- 
burnings, uncertainty,  sore  wrenchings  within  oneself, 
misunderstanding,  vilification,  recrimination  from 
others  are  inevitably  involved.  All  these  Newman  had 
to  endure.  He  endured  them  all  with  serene  calmness, 
kindness,  sweetness.     He  stands  like  a  colossal,  full-  9 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  127 

surpliced  priest  in  the  midst  of  a  hurrying,  week-day, 
clamorous  throng. 

When  John  Henry  Newman  entered  Trinity  Col- 
lege, Oxford,  in  18 16,  he  was  already  well  furnished 
with  religious  opinions.  He  was  the  son  of  a  pious 
London  banker;  he  had  learned  to  love  Scott  and  the 
Bible ;  he  was  imaginative,  and  in  a  way  superstitious — 
he  had  formed  a  habit  of  crossing  himself  whenever 
he  entered  a  dark  room.  His  "conversion,''  which 
had  recently  occurred,  was  not,  like  Carlyle's,  an 
illumination  proceeding  from  a  single  great  idea,  but 
the  firm  and  final  acceptance  of  certain  dogmas  or  doc- 
trines— the  doctrine  of  "final  perseverance,"  the  doc- 
trines of  eternal  punishment  and  eternal  happiness, 
and  the  conviction  that  his  "calling  in  life  would  in- 
volve such  a  sacrifice  as  celibacy  involved."  His  read- 
ing, moreover,  had  convinced  him  that  the  Pope  was 
the  Antichrist  foretold  by  Daniel,  St.  Paul,  and  St. 
John. 

In  1 81 8  he  distinguished  himself  by  winning  a 
Trinity  scholarship;  but  when  he  had  completed  his 
course  he  was  so  exhausted  from  overwork  that  in- 
stead of  securing  the  high  honors  almost  within  his 
grasp,  he  barely  qualified  for  his  degree.  Private  pupils 
occupied  him  at  Oxford  until  in  1822  he  redeemed  his 
reputation  as  a  scholar  by  winning  a  fellowship  at 
Oriel  College.  Studying,  lecturing,  writing  here,  he 
qualified  as  a  clergyman,  and  was  chosen  in  1827 
preacher  at   Whitehall  and  public  examiner   in  the 


128  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

classics,  and,  in  1828,  vicar  of  St.  Mary's,  the  Uni- 
versity Church.    So  far,  comparative  harmony. 

By  1832,  however,  his  carefully  deliberated  opinions 
on  several  topics — the  function  of  a  tutor  among  them 
— had  resulted  in  such  disagreement  with  the  authori- 
ties that  he  resigned  his  position  at  Oriel.  With  a 
friend  he  traveled  on  the  Continent,  especially  in  Italy 
and  in  the  islands  of  the  Mediteranean.  The  CathoHc 
religion  as  he  observed  its  influence  there  seemed  to 
him  "degrading  and  idolatrous."  He  composed  many 
poems;  one  of  them,  written  while  he  was  becalmed 
for  a  week  on  an  orange-boat  bound  from  Sicily  to 
Marseilles,  was  Lead,  Kindly  Light. 

By  the  time  Newman  returned  to  England  in  1833, 
the  destruction  which  Carlyle  had  foretold  for  all 
existing  institutions,  seemed  really  about  to  seize  the 
Anglican  Church.  The  new  Parliament,  that  elected 
under  the  Reform  Bill  of  1832,  was  at  work;  one  of 
its  acts,  as  supreme  over  church  and  state,  was  to 
abolish  ten  Irish  bishoprics.  Many  people  regarded 
this  as  the  first  step  in  a  thorough-going  revolutionary 
process  which  should  eventually  compass  the  complete 
separation  of  the  Church  from  the  state.  A  friend 
of  Newman's,  John  Keble,  preached  a  startling  ser- 
mon at  Oxford  on  what  he  called  the  "national  apos- 
tasy." Good  and  learned  Churchmen,  Newman  among 
them,  met  together  and  determined  to  fight  for  the 
Church's  threatened  integrity,  for  its  doctrines  and  its 
practices.  They  felt  that  the  Anglican  Church  had  in- 
herited, and  was  fully  entitled  to  occupy,  a  more  ex- 
alted position  than  it  had  ever  occupied;  it  would  be 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  129 

their  duty  and  their  delight,  they  concluded,  to  con- 
vince others,  within  and  without  the  Church,  of  this 
fact. 

The  meeting  of  these  loyal  Qiurchmen  was  the 
beginning  and  their  purpose  was  the  purpose  of  what 
has  been  called  the  Oxford  Movement,  the  effort  of 
some  scholarly  adherents  of  the  Church,  most  of  them 
in  residence  at  Oxford,  to  rehabilitate  and  exalt  the 
Church  of  England  in  England.  The  movement  was 
advanced  chiefly  through  a  series  of  short  papers,  by 
Newman  and  others,  called  Tracts  for  the  Times.  In 
them  the  creed  of  the  Church,  the  significance  of  the 
Church's  establishment  and  of  its  history,  its  claim 
that  it  is  the  direct  and  legitimate  successor  of  the 
early  Christian  Church — all  these  were  keenly  and 
thoroughly  discussed.  Newman  preached  in  the  same 
vein  in  St.  Mary's  Chapel,  Oxford. 

Many  good  Churchmen  were  bewildered  by  the 
extent  of  the  claims  made  by  the  "Tractarians,"  many 
denounced  them  as  preposterous,  many  were  convinced 
of  their  justice  and  importance.  The  most  lasting 
result  of  the  Movement  was  the  revivifying  of  the 
Established  Church,  a  renewal  of  vigor  and  service- 
ableness  which  seems  to  have  extended  to  the  remotest 
parishes  and  the  most  insignificant  phases  of  the 
Church's  activity.  Finally,  the  most  startling  result 
of  the  Movement  was  the  conversion  of  Newman  him- 
self, through  the  very  processes  of  thought  which 
had  led  him  to  exalt  the  Anglican  Church,  to  the 
Roman  Catholic  religion.  We  need  consider  only  a 
few  facts  relating  to  the  event. 


130  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

The  whole  trend  of  Newman's  teaching  in  Tracts 
for  the  Times  was  toward  establishing  for  the  Angli- 
can Church  the  same  authority,  the  same  authenticity 
which  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  claimed.  His 
enemies  had  long  maintained  that  he  was  virtually  a 
Catholic — and  to  most  Englishmen  of  that  day,  being 
a  Catholic  was  still  almost  as  bad,  though  not  so 
illegal,  as  being  a  thief  or  a  traitor.  These  critics 
were  to  be  confirmed  in  their  declaration.  Tract  po, 
the  last  of  the  series,  which  appeared  in  1841,  had 
for  its  thesis  that  the  Thirty-Nine  Articles  oppose  not 
the  teaching,  in  only  slight  measure  the  dogma,  simply 
the  dominant  errors  of  Rome.  This  was  far  less 
orthodox  than  anything  that  had  yet  been  main- 
tained. It  developed  rabid  opposition,  the  bitterest 
calumny.  Newman  pursued  his  thoughts  and  his 
studies  regardless  of  all  criticism.  By  1843  ^^  ^^^ 
felt  compelled  to  resign  his  office  as  preacher  at  St. 
Mary's,  and  had  written  a  retraction  of  what  in  his 
early  writings  he  had  said  against  Rome  and  now 
saw  to  be  unfounded.  As  he  wrote  these  retractions, 
the  last  lingering  doubt  as  to  his  proper  course  finally 
disappeared;  in  1845  he  was  received  into  the  Catholic 
Church,  and  the  next  year  he  quitted  Oxford. 

It  is  obvious  how  this  step  would  make  Newman 
figure  in  other  men's  minds.  Their  contempt  and 
hatred  appeared  in  several  ways.  In  185 1,  Newman 
saw  fit  to  expose  the  moral  turpitude  of  a  certain 
"converted"  monk  named  Achilli;  he  was  sued  for 
libel;  his  carefully  prepared  defense  proved  inade- 
quate under  the  circumstances,  and  he  was  fined  one 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  131 

hundred  pounds.  This  sum,  together  with  his  ex- 
penses of  some  14,000  pounds,  was  raised  by  popular 
subscription — not  wholly  among  Catholics.  Two  other 
illustrations  of  the  attitude  of  most  English  people 
will  be  mentioned  later. 

Newman  had  planned  to  live  a  life  of  obscure  de- 
votion and  service  in  his  new  religious  relations ;  when 
a  district  of  England  was  isolated  on  account  of  an 
epidemic  of  cholera,  Newman  with  a  few  others  in- 
sisted upon  remaining  in  the  neighborhood  and  doing 
all  that  could  be  done  for  the  victims  of  the  disease. 
His  learning  and  talents,  however,  were  too  remarkable 
and  too  widely  known  for  him  to  remain  in  obscurity. 
He  was  in  demand  as  a  preacher  and  lecturer  before 
Catholic  bodies.  He  was  honored  by  the  Pope  with 
various  offices  and  duties. 

His  own  nature  led  him  to  give  particular  atten- 
tion to  the  means  of  education  provided  for  Catho- 
lics. In  1854  he  was  given  the  honorable  and  re- 
sponsible position  of  Rector  of  the  new  Catholic  Uni- 
versity at  Dublin.  Organizing  such  an  institution 
was  a  work  for  which  Newman  was  poorly  fitted; 
it  proved,  moreover,  to  be  a  forlorn  project  on  other 
grounds,  and  within  a  few  years  it  was  abandoned. 
Newman's  lectures,  published  under  the  title  of  Idea 
of  a  University,  constitute,  however,  a  notable  and 
lasting  outcome  of  this  educational  experiment. 

We  come  now  to  what  was  perhaps  the  most  pain- 
ful experience  in  Newman's  life,  the  one,  moreover, 
which  called  forth  his  best-known  literary  work.  In 
1864  an  anonymous  reviewer  in  a  book  review  of 


132  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

Froude's  History  of  England  in  Macmillan's  Mag- 
azine took  occasion  to  say: 

"Truth,  for  its  own  sake,  had  never  been  a  virtue  with  the 
Roman  clergy.  Father  Newman  informs  us  that  it  need  not, 
and  on  the  whole  ought  not  to  be ;  that  cunning  is  the  weapon 
which  Heaven  has  given  to  the  saints  wherewith  to  with- 
stand the  brute  male  force  of  the  wicked  world  which  mar- 
ries and  is  given  in  marriage.  Whether  his  notion  be  doc- 
trinally  correct  or  not,  it  is  at  least  historically  so." 

Newman  protested  to  the  editors.  The  writer,  Rev. 
Professor  Charles  Kingsley,  acknowledged  to  New- 
man the  authorship  of  the  article,  and  they  corre- 
sponded on  the  subject.  Kingsley  virtually  failed  to 
prove  or  to  retract.  Newman  published  their  corre- 
spondence. Kingsley  published  a  pamphlet.  Then 
Newman  published,  in  a  series  of  pamphlets,  his  fa- 
mous Apologia  pro  vita  sua  (1864),  recounting  his  re- 
ligious experiences  and  maintaining  that  it  was  his  very 
love  of  truth  which  had  led  him  all  along.  It  is  said 
that  the  Apologia  does  not  vindicate  the  Catholic 
Church  on  Kingsley's  charge ;  but  it  is  universally  ac- 
knowledged that  the  book  establishes  for  all  time  the 
honesty  and  rectitude  of  the  man  Newman.  The  book 
is  generally  considered  as  a  record  of  religious  experi- 
ence comparable  only  to  St.  Augustine's  Confessions. 
Newman  was  to  be  subjected  to  yet  one  more  attack, 
likewise  of  nation-wide  publicity  and  importance.  This 
time  the  blow  came  from  the  statesman  and  religious 
controversialist,  Gladstone,  writing  in  the  Contempo- 
rary Review  in  1874.  Gladstone  maintained  that  no  one 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  I33 

could  become  converted  to  Rome  without  renounc- 
ing moral  and  intellectual  freedom,  and,  what  was  of 
more  practical  importance,  civil  allegiance.  In  his 
Letter  to  the  Duke  of  Norfolk,  Newman  expressed  a 
vigorous,  dignified,  and  effective  denial  of  these 
charges.  They  seem  never  to  have  been  seriously  and 
intelligently  repeated  against  Catholics  since  that  time. 

How  much  of  the  forbearance,  the  mutual  respect, 
and  appreciation  which  to-day  characterize  Catholics 
and  Protestants  in  their  relations  with  each  other, 
may  be  due  to  the  intelligence,  the  frankness,  and 
the  sincerity  of  Cardinal  Newman,  it  is  impossible 
to  say.  It  is  easy  to  believe  that  Newman's  contribu- 
tion to  this  result  is  considered  by  the  Recording  Angel 
a  substantial  item. 

Honors,  approved  successively  by  more  and  more 
Protestants,  were  now  heaped  upon  Newman.  In 
1878  he  was  elected  honorary  fellow  of  Trinity  Col- 
lege, Oxford,  and  revisited  the  University  after  thirty- 
two  years  of  absence.  In  1879  he  was  created  Car- 
dinal. And  in  1880  he  preached  at  Oxford.  He  died, 
August  II,  1890. 

Three  expressions  which  are  said  to  have  been  cur- 
rent at  Oxford  when  Newman  entered  the  University, 
seem  to  emphasize,  by  their  contrast  to  expressions  of 
our  attitude  to-day — whatever  other  features  may 
characterize  our  attitude — what  Newman  and  his  labor 
for  religion  and  the  Church  have  accomplished.  Not 
a  few  students  at  Oxford  in  the  '20's  are  said  to  have 
concluded  that  "there  is  nothing  new,  nothing  true, 


134  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

and  it  doesn't  matter";  not  many  of  us  can  conclude 
that  for  long.  Young  aspirants  for  church  positions  in 
the  '20*s  are  said  to  have  been  seriously  counseled  to 
"improve  their  Greek  and  let  go  visiting  the  poor." 
There  are  few  young  men  to-day  who  would  not  in- 
dignantly reject  such  abominable  counsel.  "O  God," 
many  of  those  students  are  said  actually  or  virtually 
to  have  prayed,  "O  God,  if  there  be  a  God,  save  my 
soul,  if  I  have  a  soul."  Newman  has  helped  us,  more 
and  more  consistently,  either  boldly  to  silence  the  en- 
tire prayer  or  intelligently  to  eliminate  the  equivocat- 
ing "ifs"  in  it. 

Newman  surely  erected  a  barrier  against  the  drift 
toward  atheism.  He  demonstrated,  moreover,  that  in- 
telligent faith  and  earnest  works  must  go  together. 
And  he  helped  to  make  hypocrisy  in  the  guise  of  out- 
ward conformity  appear  properly  detestable.  What 
more  he  accomplished,  how  completely  right  he  was  in 
his  conclusions  as  to  details,  time  alone  can  tell.  The 
intensity,  the  earnestness,  the  intellectuality  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  we  may  safely  conclude,  are 
largely  explained  by  the  existence  and  the  activity  of 
Cardinal  Newman. 


RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON   (1803-1882) 
Chronology 

1803  Born,  May  25,  in  Boston,  Massachusetts.    Clergy- 

man ancestry.    Mary  Moody  Emerson,  his  amit. 

1804  Father  and  others  founded  Monthly  Anthology  and 

Boston  Review  (forerunner  of  North  American 
Review) . 
1817  Graduated  from  Boston  Latin  School. 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  I3S 

1 817- 1 821  At  Harvard  College.  School  teaching.  Stud- 
ies. 

1826  Approbated  to  preach,  Unitarian. 

1830  Pastor  of  Second  Unitarian  Church,  Boston.  Mar- 
ried Miss  Tucker.  1831,  Death  of  wife.  1832, 
Resigned  pastorate — ill-health  and  scruples.  Vis- 
ited England  and  Continent,  and  met  Carlyle. 

1835  Married  Miss  Jackson.  Settled  in  Concord.  Lec- 
tures. Nature  published  (500  copies,  thirteen 
years). 

1837  Address  on  The  American  Scholar  before  Harvard 

Phi  Beta  Kappa  society. 

1838  Harvard  Divinity  School  Address;  orthodox  ani- 

mosity. 

1840  The  Dial  begun;  i844ff.,  Emerson  its  editor. 

1841  Essays,  First  Series;  1844,  Essays,  Second  Series. 

1846  Poems. 

1847  Lecture   tour   in  England  and   Scotland. 
1850  Representative  Men.     1856,  English  Traits. 
i860  Conduct  of  Life  (edition  exhausted  in  forty-eight 

hours). 
1867  May  Day  and  Other  Poems.     1870,  Society  and 

Solitude. 
1875  Letters  and  Social  Aims. 
1882  Died  at  Concord,  April  2y. 

In  1824  a  Cambridge,  Massachusetts,  school  teacher 
and  divinity  student,  just  come  of  age,  wrote  in  his 
journal  as  follows : 

"Apart  from  the  vastness  of  transitory  volumes  which 
occasional  politics  or  a  thousand  ephemeral  magnalia  elicit, 
.  .  .  there  is  another  sort  of  book  which  appears  now  and 
then  in  the  world,  once  in  two  or  three  centuries  perhaps, 
and  which  soon  or  late  gets  a  foothold  in  popular  esteem.  I 
allude  to  those  books  which  collect  and  embody  the  wisdom 


136  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

of  their  times,  and  so  mark  the  stages  of  human  improve- 
ment. Such  are  the  Proverbs  of  Solomon,  the  Essays  of 
Montaigne,  and  eminently  the  Essays  of  Bacon.  ...  I  should 
like  to  add  another  volume  to  this  valuable  work.  I  am  not 
so  foolhardy  as  to  write  Sequel  to  Bacon  on  my  title-page; 
and  there  are  some  reasons  that  induce  me  to  suppose  that 
the  undertaking  of  this  enterprise  does  not  imply  any  censur- 
able arrogance." 

Other  men  have  repeatedly  written — what  this  man's 
modesty  kept  him  from  writing — Sequel  to  Bacon,  or 
words  to  that  effect,  on  the  title-pages  of  the  books  of 
essays  which  he  came  to  write.  They  call  him  the 
most  original  thinker  since  Bacon,  "the  Columbus  of 
modern  thought."  His  name  was  Ralph  Waldo  Emer- 
son. We  must  try  to  understand  why  men  assign  to 
him  so  important  a  place. 

Carlyle,  as  has  been  pointed  out,  in  the  midst  of 
those  political,  social,  and  religious  difficulties  of 
1 820- 1 830,  concluded  that  the  structure  of  society 
was  breaking  down,  the  whole  fabric  being  consumed. 
He  saw,  nevertheless,  some  hopeful  features.  New 
political  and  social  conditions,  he  said,  would  result 
from  the  great  human  facts  of  heroism  and  hero- 
worship.  A  new  and  glorious  religion,  moreover,  was 
certain,  he  said,  to  develop  from  literature,  with  its 
pulpit  set  up  wherever  there  was  a  printing-press,  and 
one  great  Priest-Prophet  already  apparent  in  Goethe — 
one  "to  whom  the  Godlike  had  revealed  itself,  through 
all  meanest  and  highest  forms  of  the  Common ;  and  by 
him  been  again  prophetically  revealed;  in  whose  in- 
spired melody  .    .    .  Man's  life  again  begins  ...  to 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  I37 

be  divine.'*  Assuming  the  existence  of  this  religion 
of  letters,  we  may  conclude  that  some  future  historian 
of  its  Fathers  will  treat  next  to  Goethe,  Carlyle;  and 
next,  one  as  great  as  either  of  the  others, — Emerson. 
May  we  assume  the  existence  of  a  religion,  a  church, 
embodied  in  literature  ?  We  must  admit,  Carlyle  would 
have  had  to  admit,  that  the  ultimate  destruction  of 
other  embodiments  of  religion,  other  churches,  has  at 
least  been  postponed.  But  judging  broadly,  on  the 
most  obvious  facts,  with  the  spread  of  popular  educa- 
tion, the  increase  in  the  number  of  the  reading  public, 
the  character  and  volume  of  printed  ideas  which  are 
circulated,  may  not  Carlyle's  prophecy  be  said  to  be 
being  fulfilled?  Is  there  a  modem  sermon  which  in 
circulation,  influence,  plain  every-day  effect  upon  life 
is  to  be  compared  with  Newman's  Lead,  Kindly  Light, 
Tennyson's  Crossing  the  Bar,  or  Kipling's  Reces- 
sional? How  does  the  audience  reached  by  even  the 
most  obscure  literary  expression — magazine  article  or 
story,  newspaper  editorial  or  item — compare  with  the 
congregation  reached  by  the  most  largely  attended 
church  service  or  the  most  popular  preacher?  The 
question  would  not  have  arisen  in  1 8 14. 

This  is  all  germane  to  the  subject  of  Emerson  and 
his  position  in  American  /literature  and  American 
life.  Carlyle,  finding  himself  unable  to  subscribe  to 
the  doctrines  of  any  church,  devoted  himself  to  litera- 
ture. Emerson,  after  proving  that  he  could  preach 
acceptably,  deliberately  forsook  the  ministry  in  order 


138  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

that  he  might  be  priest  and  preacher  of  the  religion 
which  speaks  in  print. 

What  was  the  result?  A  thoughtful  and  observing 
Englishman  who  visited  this  country  late  in  Emer- 
son's life,  after  touring  the  country  for  some  time, 
reported  that  he  had  heard  many  sermons  but  only 
one  preacher — Emerson.  Now  those  preachers  did 
not  all  know  that  they  were  preaching  Emerson's 
thoughts;  his  writings  had  permeated  and  leavened 
men's  minds;  the  old  church  had  become  the  mouth- 
piece of  the  new.  It  could  probably  be  shown  that 
in  so  far  as  the  preaching  of  to-day  in  all  denomina- 
tions differs  from  what  it  was  a  hundred  years  ago,  the 
difference  is  largely  Emerson. 

Of  course,  the  vast  influence  of  Emerson  is  ex- 
hibited only  partly  in  what  we  think  of  as  church 
matters.  This  religion  of  literature  which  he  promoted 
is  catholic  as  life,  as  mankind.  It  is  difficult  to  be 
specific  in  describing  his  influence.  We  are  still  too 
near  to  him  to  distinguish  it  clearly.  It  could  be 
safely  maintained  and  clearly  established,  for  one 
thing,  however,  that  the  most  significant  movement 
in  education  in  the  nineteenth  century,  the  institution 
and  progress  of  the  elective  system,  may  be  traced  to 
ideas  inculcated  by  Emerson.^     If  men  accepted  his 

*  "Charles  W.  Eliot,  ex-President  of  Harvard  University,  emi- 
nent educator  and  man  of  affairs,  says:  *As  a  young  man  I 
found  the  writings  of  Emerson  unattractive,  and  not  seldom 
unintelligible.  .  .  .  But  when  I  had  got  at  what  proved  to  be  my 
lifework  for  education,  I  discovered  in  Emerson's  poems  and 
essays  all  the  fundamental  motives  and  principles  of  my  hourly 
struggle  against  educational  routine  and  tradition.' "  From 
Emerson,  by  D.  L.  Maulsby,  Tufts  College,  Mass.,  191 1,  p.  164. 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  I39 

views — as  they  were  sure  sooner  or  later  to  do — a 
high  degree  of  freedom  in  choice  of  studies  was  as 
inevitable  as  the  lapse  of  time. 

Consider  another  specific  case.  It  is  difficult  for  us 
to  get  Hazlitt's  point  of  view  m  On  the  Ignorance 
of  the  Learned.  "Learning  is,"  says  Hazlitt,  "in  too 
many  cases,  but  a  foil  to  common  sense;  a  substitute 
for  true  knowledge.  Books  are  less  often  made  use 
of  as  'spectacles'  to  look  at  nature  with,  than  as  blinds 
to  keep  out  its  strong  light  and  shifting  scenery  from 
weak  eyes  and  indolent  dispositions.  The  book-worm 
wraps  himself  up  in  his  web  of  verbal  generalities, 
and  sees  only  the  glimmering  shadows  of  things  re- 
flected from  the  minds  of  others.  Nature  puts  him 
out/'  We  do  not  so  regard  what  we  call  learning. 
What  is  the  explanation?  It  is  partly  that  Emerson 
has  lived  and  written  and  influenced  men  since  Haz- 
litt wrote.  Most  of  Errierson's  writing  not  only  illus- 
trates but  emphasizes  positively  what  Hazlitt  em- 
phasized negatively.  Learning,  says  Hazlitt,  is  folly; 
learning,  says  Emerson,  should  be,  must  be  wisdom. 
"Nature,"  says  Hazlitt,  "puts  him  [the  learned  man] 
out!"  Nature,  said  Emerson  in  his  first  work,  and 
repeatedly  through  his  life,  should  and  must  be  the 
learned  man's  chief  object  of  study  and  contemplation. 
Not  books  only  or  chiefly,  but  the  face  of  nature,  men, 
himself,  must  the  student  be  concerned  with. 

See  further  wherein  Hazlitt  says  the  learned  (he 
included  most  literary  men  of  his  time)  fell  short : 

"Learning  is  the  knowledge  of  that  which  is  not  generally 
known  to  others,  and  which  we  can  only  derive  at  second- 


140  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

hand  from  books  or  other  artificial  sources.  The  knowledge 
of  that  which  is  before  us,  or  about  us,  which  appeals  to  our 
experience,  passions,  and  pursuits,  to  the  bosoms  and  busi- 
nesses of  men,  is  not  learning.  Learning  is  the  knowledge 
of  that  which  none  but  the  learned  know.  He  is  the  most 
learned  man  who  knows  the  most  of  what  is  farthest  re- 
moved from  common  life  and  actual  observation,  that  is  of 
the  least  practical  utility,  and  least  liable  to  be  brought  to 
the  test  of  experience  ..." 

Are  not  these  the  very  things  that  learned  men  are 
to-day  primarily  or  ultimately  concerned  with  ?  Emer- 
son has  made  necessary  a  footnote  to  the  term  "learn- 
ing" as  used  by  Hazlitt.  The  philosophical  lectures 
and  writings  of  President  Hyde  and  Professor  Berg- 
son,  the  few  poems  which  are  widely  read,  the  essays 
and  the  many  novels  and  stories — all  are  alike  in 
this,  that  they  appeal  "to  our  experience,  passions, 
and  pursuits,  to  the  bosoms  and  businesses  of  men," 
that  they  are  human  in  the  extreme.  The  criticism 
of  learning  voiced  by  Hazlitt  is  still  occasionally  re- 
peated, but  it  is  the  one  which  men  in  every  intellectual 
realm,  seriously  and  deeply  applied,  regard  as  damning. 
This  does  not  mean  that  Emerson  was  a  mere  utili- 
tarian. It  was  the  highest  wisdom  which  he  found 
and  which  he  taught  others  to  find  in  the  things  of 
daily  life.  Witness  this  gleaming  passage  from 
Civilization : 

"Civilization  depends  upon  morality.  Everything  good  in 
man  leans  on  what  is  higher.  This  rule  holds  in  small  as  in 
great.  Thus  all  our  strength  and  success  in  the  work  of  our 
hands  depends  on  our  borrowing  the  aid  of  the  elements. 
You  have  seen  a  carpenter  on  a  ladder  with  a  broad-axe 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  141 

chopping  upward  chips  from  a  beam.  How  awkward!  At 
what  disadvantage  he  works !  But  see  him  on  the  ground, 
dressing  his  timber  under  him.  Now,  not  his  feeble  muscles 
but  the  force  of  gravity  brings  down  the  axe;  that  is  to 
say,  the  planet  itself  splits  his  stick.  The  farmer  had  much 
ill-temper,  laziness  and  shirking  to  endure  from  his  hand- 
sawyers,  until  one  day  he  bethought  him  to  put  his  saw- 
mill on  the  edge  of  a  waterfall;  and  the  river  never  tires 
of  turning  his  wheel;  the  river  is  good-natured,  and  never 
hints  an  objection.  ...  I  admire  still  more  than  the  saw- 
mill the  skill  which  on  the  sea-shore  makes  the  tides  drive 
the  wheels  and  grind  corn,  and  which  thus  engages  the  as- 
sistance of  the  moon,  like  a  hired  hand,  to  grind,  and  wind, 
and  pump,  and  saw,  and  split  stone,  and  roll  iron. 

"Now  that  is  the  wisdom  of  a  man,  in  every  instance  of  his 
labor,  to  hitch  his  wagon  to  a  star,  and  see  his  chore  done  by 
the  gods  themselves.  That  is  the  way  we  are  strong,  by 
borrowing  the  might  of  the  elements.  The  forces  of  steam, 
gravity,  galvanism,  light,  magnets,  wind,  fire,  serve  us  day 
by  day  and  cost  us  nothing.  .  .  . 

"All  our  arts  aim  to  win  this  vantage.  We  cannot  bring 
the  heavenly  powers  to  us,  but  if  we  will  only  choose  our 
jobs  in  directions  in  which  they  travel,  they  will  undertake 
them  with  the  greatest  pleasure.  It  is  a  peremptory  rule  with 
them  that  they  never  go  out  of  their  road.  We  are  dapper 
little  busybodies  and  run  this  way  and  that  way  super- 
serviceably;  but  they  swerve  never  from  their  foreordained 
paths, — neither  the  sun,  nor  the  moon,  nor  a  bubble  of  air, 
nor  a  mote  of  dust.  .  .  . 

"Hitch  your  wagon  to  a  star.  Let  us  not  fag  in  paltry 
works  which  serve  our  pot  and  bag  alone.  Let  us  not  lie 
and  steal.  No  god  will  help.  We  shall  find  all  their  teams 
going  the  other  way, — Charles's  Wain,  Great  Bear,  Orion, 
Leo,  Hercules:  every  god  will  leave  us.  Work  rather  for 
those  interests  which  the  divinities  honor  and  promote — 
justice,  love,  freedom,  knowledge,  utility." 


142  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

Such  teaching,  such  an  example,  has  had  an  in- 
fluence upon  thought  and  action  since  Emerson  wrote 
it.  Lowell  in  his  A  Fable  for  Critics  characterizes 
Emerson  as: 

"A  Greek  head  on  right  Yankee  shoulders,  whose  range 
Has  Olympus  for  one  pole,  for  t'other  the  Exchange." 

Few  men  since  Emerson  are  inactive  in  the  region 
typified  by  "the  Exchange";  more  and  more  men, 
there  is  reason  to  believe,  since  his  time,  range  near  to 
Olympus  as  well. 

This  account  of  Emerson's  activity  and  influence 
in  the  pulpit  of  letters  is  an  important  preliminary 
to  a  detailed  account  of  his  life.  The  effect  of  the 
whole  cannot  be  adequately  conveyed  by  a  scrutiny  of 
the  parts.  Keep  in  mind  the  significance  of  the  teach- 
ings of  this  calm,  active,  self-reliant  and  far-seeing 
man,  as  we  see  where  and  how  he  lived  and  was  suc- 
cessively employed. 

Ralph  Waldo  Emerson's  father  had  been  pastor  of 
the  Congregational  Church  at  Concord,  Massachu- 
setts, during  the  Revolution.  Later  he  had  become 
pastor  of  the  First  Church  of  Boston.  In  Boston 
Ralph  Waldo,  the  second  of  five  sons,  was  born  on 
May  25,  1803.  Seven  distinguished  clergymen  are 
said  to  have  been  among  the  boy's  immediate  ancestors. 
His  father  was  prominent  in  the  small  but  brilliant 
group  of  men  of  literary  tastes  then  in  Boston,  and  be- 
came editor  of  The  Monthly  Anthology  and  Boston 
Review  J  established  in  1804,  the  precursor  of  the  North 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  I43 

American  Review  (established  in  1815).  That  the 
literary  activity  indicated  by  all  this  was  considerable 
we  shall  find  evidence. 

Emerson  attended  the  Boston  Grammar  School, 
the  Boston  Latin  School,  and  from  181 7  to  1821, 
Harvard  College.  More  important  in  its  influence 
upon  him  than  any  of  these  experiences  was  the 
intellectual  companionship  of  his  aunt,  Mary  Moody 
Emerson,  a  gifted  though  eccentric  woman  of  wide 
reading  and  exquisite  taste.  In  college  he  stood  high, 
but  not  among  the  highest;  he  took  but  a  second 
prize  in  a  senior  essay-competition,  and  he  consented 
to  write  the  class  poem  at  graduation  after  the  honor 
had  been  declined  in  turn  by  seven  others.  His  real  ac- 
tivities during  these  days  are  exhibited  in  his  Journal: 
the  nature  and  the  variety  of  his  reading,  his  long, 
long  thoughts,  his  experiments  in  composition,  in 
self-expression. 

In  his  vacations  he  taught  school,  for  his  family  was 
poor;  and  on  graduating  from  college  he  continued 
to  teach,  and  at  the  same  time  studied  for  his  father's 
profession,  the  ministry.  Without  completing  his 
formal  studies  he  was  approbated  as  a  preacher  of  the 
Unitarian  Church  in  1826. 

Emerson's  Journal  refers  very  early  to  the  essays 
which  were  appearing  from  time  to  time  by  one  T. 
Carlyle,  a  Scotch  contributor  to  the  Edinburgh  Review 
and  other  reviews.  But  before  Carlyle  had  begun  to 
preach  audibly,  some  of  the  doctrines  he  was  to  stress 
had  been  acted  upon  by  Emerson.  Almost  simulta- 
neously these  two  men,  on  opposite  sides  of  the  Atlan- 


144  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

tic,  were  actuated  by  some  of  the  same  great  principles. 
That  doctrine  of  piercing  through  the  superficial  to  the 
essence,  early  dominated  Emerson.  As  a  successful 
preacher  in  Boston,  it  led  him  to  question,  not  lightly, 
but  deeply  and  seriously,  two  features  of  the  church 
services.  One  of  these  features  was  the  custom  of 
offering  prayer.     He  says : 

"That  it  is  right  to  ask  God's  blessing  on  us  is  certainly 
reasonable.  That  it  is  right  to  enumerate  our  wants,  our 
sins,  even  our  sentiments,  in  addresses  to  this  unseen  Idea, 
seems  just  and  natural.  And  it  may  probably  be  averred 
with  safety  that  there  has  been  no  man  who  never  prayed. 
That  persons  whom  like  circumstances  and  like  feelings  as- 
similate, that  a  family,  that  a  picked  society  of  friends,  should 
unite  in  this  service,  does  not,  I  conceive,  violate  any  precept 
of  just  reason.  It  certainly  is  a  question  of  more  difficult 
solution  whether  a  promiscuous  assemblage  such  as  is  con- 
tained in  houses  of  public  worship,  and  collected  by  such 
motives,  can  unite  with  propriety  to  advantage  in  any  peti- 
tion such  as  is  usually  offered  by  one  man.  .  .  . 

"The  man  who  prays  is  in  quite  another  mood  from  the 
man  who  hears,  and  tones  and  language  which  we  have  once 
become  accustomed  to  regard  with  suspicion  or  at  best  with 
admiration,  it  will  be  long  ere  we  learn  to  listen  to  them  with 
sympathy.  The  truth  is,  public  prayer  is  rather  the  off- 
spring of  our  notions  of  what  ought  to  be,  than  of  what  is. 
It  has  grown  out  of  the  sentiment  of  a  few,  rather  than  the 
reason  of  many." 

The  other  feature  was  the  periodical  celebration  of 
the  Communion.  Emerson  came  to  the  conclusion  that 
it  had  not  been  intended  by  Christ  for  a  perpetual 
institution. 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  I4S 

Other  beliefs  which  he  had  acquired  made  him 
trust  his  own  judgment  as  to  these  two.  He  says 
further  in  his  Journal: 

"Hypocrisy  is  the  attendant  of  false  religion.  When  peo- 
ple imagine  that  others  can  be  their  priests,  they  may  well 
fear  hypocrisy.  Whenever  they  understand  that  no  religion 
can  do  them  any  more  good  than  they  can  actually  taste, 
they  have  done  fearing  hypocrisy." 

"I  suppose  it  is  not  wise,  not  being  natural,  to  belong  to 
any  religious  party.  In  the  Bible  you  are  not  directed  to  be 
a  Unitarian,  or  a  Calvinist,  or  an  Episcopalian.  Now  if  a 
man  is  wise,  he  will  not  only  not  profess  himself  to  be  a 
Unitarian,  but  he  will  say  to  himself,  I  am  not  a  member 
of  that  or  of  any  party.  I  am  God's  child,  a  disciple  of 
Christ,  or,  in  the  eye  of  God,  a  fellow-disciple  with  Christ." 

"The  great  difficulty  is  that  men  do  not  think  enough  of 
themselves,  do  not  consider  what  it  is  that  they  are  sacrific- 
ing, when  they  follow  in  a  herd,  or  when  they  cater  for  their 
establishment.  They  know  not  how  divine  is  a  man.  ...  A 
man  should  learn  to  detect  and  foster  that  gleam  of  light 
which  flashes  across  his  mind  from  within  far  more  than  the 
luster  of  the  whole  firmament  without.  Yet  he  dismisses 
without  notice  his  peculiar  thought  because  it  is  peculiar. 
The  time  will  come  when  he  will  postpone  all  acquired 
knowledge  to  this  spontaneous  wisdom,  and  will  watch  for 
this  illumination  more  than  those  who  watch  for  the  morn- 
ing." 

It  is  plain  to  what  this  Carlylean  habit  (not  imi- 
tated from  Carlyle,  remember,  but  likewise  native  to 
Emerson)  of  seeing  was  leading  Emerson :  Rely  upon 
your  own  flashes  of  insight,  sects  are  to  say  the  least 
superfluous,  certain  religious  customs  are  unfounded 


146  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

and  unwise.  Soon  he  wrote:  "I  have  sometimes 
thought  that,  in  order  to  be  a  good  minister,  it  was 
necessary  to  leave  the  ministry."  When  this  crisis 
in  his  thought  was  reached  he  first  retired  to  the 
White  Mountains  to  think  it  over  carefully,  then 
preached  a  simple  sermon  from  his  pulpit  in  the  Second 
Church  in  Boston,  stating  his  views  and  his  inability 
to  continue  as  minister  if  the  church  customs  remained 
unchanged.  His  Journal  records  the  outcome:  the 
proposed  changes  were  voted  down,  and  his  resigna- 
tion was  accepted.  This  was  in  1832.  Henceforth 
Emerson  was  to  be  a  minister  outside  the  church,  a 
preacher  from  the  free  and  broad  lecture  platform,  a 
high  priest  of  the  religion  of  letters. 

The  literary  circle  to  which  Emerson  like  his  father 
belonged,  the  patrons  of  early  American  reviews,  read 
with  great  attention  the  English  reviews.  Emerson, 
as  has  been  said,  had  been  early  attracted  by  different 
articles  in  the  Edinburgh  Review  from  the  hand,  which 
he  promptly  came  to  recognize,  of  a  certain  "German- 
ick  light  writer."     He  records  in  October,  1832: 

"I  am  cheered  and  instructed  by  this  paper  on  Corn  Law 
Rhymes  in  the  Edinburgh  by  my  Germanick  new-light  writer, 
whoever  he  be.  He  gives  us  confidence  in  our  principles.  He 
assures  the  truth-lover  everywhere  of  sympathy.  Blessed  art 
that  makes  books,  and  so  joins  me  to  that  stranger  by  this 
perfect  railroad." 

"If  Carlyle  knew  what  an  interest  I  have  in  his  persistent 
goodness,  would  it  not  be  worth  one  effort  more,  one  prayer, 
one  meditation?  But  will  he  resist  the  Deluge  of  bad  ex- 
ample in  England?     One  manifestation  of  goodness  in  a 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  W 

noble  soul  brings  him  in  debt  to  all  the  beholders  that  he 
shall  not  betray  their  love  and  trust  which  he  has  awak- 
ened." 

The  character  of  this  young  periodical  writer  and 
the  prospect  of  seeing  other  loved  authors — Words- 
worth and  Coleridge  among  them,  together  with  his 
need  of  rest  and  variety  after  his  recent  critical  experi- 
ences, led  Emerson  to  travel  in  Europe.  He  says  at 
the  beginning  of  English  Traits: 

"Like  most  young  men  at  that  time,  I  was  much  indebted 
to  the  men  of  Edinburgh  and  of  the  Edinburgh  Review — ^to 
Jeffrey,  Mackintosh,  Hallam,  and  to  Scott,  Playfair,  and  De 
Quincey;  and  my  narrow  and  desultory  reading  had  inspired 
the  wish  to  see  the  faces  of  three  or  four  writers, — Coleridge, 
Wordsworth,  Landor,  De  Quincey,  and  the  latest  and  strong- 
est contributor  to  the  critical  journals,  Carlyle;  and  I  sup- 
pose if  I  had  sifted  the  reasons  that  led  me  to  Europe,  when 
I  was  ill  and  was  advised  to  travel,  it  was  mainly  the  attrac- 
tion of  these  persons." 

In  1833  Emerson  returned  to  America,  and  set 
seriously  to  work  upon  a  series  of  essays  which  should 
convey  the  kernel  of  his  best  thinking.  The  spirit 
in  which  he  wrought  is  indicated  by  this  entry  in  his 
Journal  in  November,  1834: 

"Henceforth  I  design  not  to  utter  any  speech,  poem  or 
book  that  is  not  entirely  and  peculiarly  my  work.  I  will  say 
at  public  lectures  and  the  like,  those  things  which  I  have 
meditated  for  their  own  sake  and  not  for  the  first  time  with 
a  view  to  that  occasion." 


148  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

His  work  as  a  thinker  and  a  writer  was  facilitated 
by  his  removal  to  Concord  to  live  in  1835.  That  year 
his  series  of  essays  appeared:  the  title,  Nature,  in- 
dicated what  it  emphasized.    Carlyle  wrote  him : 

"Your  little  azure-colored  Nature  gave  me  true  satisfaction. 
I  read  it,  and  then  lent  it  about  to  all  my  acquaintances  that 
had  a  sense  for  such  things;  from  whom  a  similar  verdict 
always  came  back.  You  say  it  is  the  first  chapter  of  some- 
thing greater.  I  call  it  rather  the  Foundation  and  Ground- 
plan  on  which  you  may  build  whatsoever  of  great  and  true 
has  been  given  you  to  build.  It  is  the  true  Apocalypse,  this 
when  the  'Open  Secret'  becomes  revealed  to  a  man.  I  re- 
joice much  in  the  glad  serenity  of  soul  with  which  you  look 
out  on  this  wondrous  dwelling-place  of  yours  and  mine — 
with  an  ear  for  the  Ewigen  Melodien  which  pipe  in  the  winds 
round  us,  and  utter  themselves  forth  in  all  sounds  and  sights 
and  things:  not  to  be  written  down  by  gamut-machinery; 
but  which  all  right  writing  is  a  kind  of  attempt  to  write 
down." 


These  two  friends,  Carlyle  and  Emerson,  were 
rapidly  cementing  their  relation.  Emerson  tried  in 
vain  to  persuade  Carlyle  to  give  lectures  in  America. 
But  in  1836  he  did  publish  an  American  edition  of 
Sartor  Resartus — shorn  of  the  eccentricity,  dear  to 
Carlyle,  of  frequent  capital  letters;  and  the  sum  of 
money  realized  by  the  sale,  accounted  for  in  honest 
Yankee  fashion,  was  a  most  welcome  benison  to  Car- 
lyle. Emerson  edited  an  edition  of  Carlyle's  Essays 
also,  in  1836. 

Two  notable  addresses  were  the  next  important 
fruits  of  Emerson's   retirement.     Each  may  almost 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  I49 

be  said  to  have  resounded  through  the  century.  In 
1837  he  gave  as  the  Phi  Beta  Kappa  oration  at  Har- 
vard an  address  on  The  American  Scholar.  It  re- 
iterated one  of  the  thoughts  of  Nature,  the  thought 
that  true  knowledge  must  be  sought  through  direct 
contact  with  things,  with  nature;  it  also  declared  that 
American  scholars,  hitherto  the  obsequious  imitators 
of  European  thinkers,  owed  it  to  themselves  and  to  the 
world  to  proceed  upon  the  new  principle  of  scholar- 
ship. The  speech  has  been  called  the  declaration  of 
American  intellectual  independence. 

The  other  address  created  bitterness.  It  was  de- 
livered at  the  Harvard  Divinity  School  in  1838.  Em- 
erson pointed  out  certain  ways  in  which  it  seemed 
to  him  that  religion  and  God  were  being  misrepre- 
sented by  contemporary  thinkers  and  preachers.  He 
urged  the  divinity  students  not  to  withdraw,  how- 
ever, from  established  sects  and  institutions  (as  he 
himself  had  felt  obliged  to  do),  but  to  transform,  to 
enlarge  them  from  within.  Orthodox  church  people 
now  centered  upon  Emerson  the  fire  of  criticism  and 
denunciation  which  had  previously  been  directed 
against  the  Unitarians  as  a  sect.  They  called  him  a 
deist  and  a  pantheist.  They  would  not  look  at  his 
writings  (it  took  thirteen  years  to  dispose  of  500  copies 
of  Nature).  In  the  sight  of  many  people  Harvard 
was  long  stigmatized  for  having  countenanced  Emer- 
son's sentiments.  Yet  from  pulpits  of  all  denomina- 
tions one  now  hears  the  thoughts  of  this  Divinity 
School  Address  repeated ;  and  a  young  reader  to-day 
is  apt  to  wonder  why  it  created  a  stir. 


ISO  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

Just  as  Carlyle  had  expressed  in  Sartor  the  ideals 
which  he  was  to  emphasize  and  apply  throughout  his 
career,  so  Emerson  had  expressed  his  great  messages 
in  Nature  and  in  the  two  great  addresses.  From 
lecture  platform  and  lyceum  desk  throughout  the 
United  States  and  once  in  England  (in  the  series  pub- 
lished as  Representative  Men)  he  kept  reiterating 
them  in  various  forms,  gradually  attracting  listeners, 
slowly  spreading  his  ideas.  His  two  series  of  Essays 
(1841,  1844),  his  Poems  (1846),  and  other  series 
of  essays  preserved  his  thoughts  in  print.  By  i860 
his  tangible  audience  had  increased  enough  to  buy 
up  an  entire  edition  of  The  Conduct  of  Life  in  forty- 
eight  hours. 

In  1866,  Emerson  received  an  LL.D.  from  Harvard. 
In  1875  his  last  important  production  appeared.  Let- 
ters and  Social  Aims.  As  he  had  felt  his  physical  and 
intellectual  vigor  declining  he  had  resignedly  given 
up  active  work.  On  April  27,  1882,  he  died  at  Con- 
cord with  his  eyes  resting  fondly  on  a  portrait  of  Car- 
lyle which  hung  in  his  room.  On  a  shaded  knoll  in 
what  is  known  as  Sleepy  Hollow  Cemetery,  a  huge 
rough  red  granite  boulder  marks  his  grave. 

When  Professor  Josiah  Royce,  a  few  years  ago, 
wished  to  indicate  the  greatness  of  the  late  William 
James,  he  declared  that  James  was  the  third  great 
American  thinker,  the  first  in  time  being  Jonathan 
Edwards,  and  the  second  Emerson.  It  was  high  praise 
for  James,  high  also  for  Edwards;  the  preeminence 
of  Emerson  among  American  authors,  as  a  thinker  and 
as  an  essayist,  is  unquestioned. 


J 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  151 


WILLIAM  MAKEPEACE  THACKERAY  (1811-1863) 
Chronology 

181 1  Born,  July  18,  at  Calcutta. 

1816  Father  died.     1817,  to  England  with  mother. 

1822-1828  At  Charterhouse  School. 

1 829-1 830  At  Trinity  College,  Cambridge.  Travel.  Art 
studies  and  ambitions.  Legal  studies.  Journalism. 

1836  Married  a  Miss  Shawe.  Illness — insanity  of  wife. 
Articles  and  reviews  for  the  Times.  Tours, 
sketches. 

1841  Punch  founded;  Thackeray  a  contributor  until  1851 
— Snob  Papers,  etc.,  380  sketches  in  all. 

1847-1848  Vanity  Fair  published  serially.  1848,  Pen- 
dennis.  185 1,  English  Humorists.  1855,  New- 
comes,  Four  Georges.  1857,  Virginians.  Quar- 
rel with  Dickens. 

1 860- 1 862  Editor  of  Cornhill  Magazine.  Roundabout 
Papers,  Adventures  of  Philip,  Denis  Duval. 

1863  Died,  December  24. 

The  Philosophy  of  Good-Night  Literature :  what  a 
fascinating  subject  for  study  that  v^ould  be!  First  an 
analysis  of  that  state  of  mind  most  conducive  to 
sound  and  refreshing  slumber — a  state  which,  like 
the  ensuing  slumber  itself,  is  pretty  much  the  same 
for  all  the  sons  and  all  the  daughters  of  Adam  and 
Eve.  Second,  a  discriminating  compilation  of  those 
portions  of  literature  which,  experience  shows,  produce 
the  desirable  ante-somnolent  state  of  mind.  One  can 
here  merely  suggest  this  plan  of  treatment  and  adduce 
a  few  facts  for  the  compilation.  Thackeray  declares 
that  Montaigne  and  Howell's  Letters  were  his  bedside 
books.    A  certain  able  physician  states  that  he  keeps 


152  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

at  his  bedside  Holmes's  Breakfast  Table  Series.  Robert 
Louis  Stevenson,  as  stated  above,  kept  Hazlitt.  It  is 
surely  pertinent  to  add  that  the  bookshelf  beside  the 
bed  in  any  prospective  mansion  may  well  accommodate 
all  of  what  are  referred  to  as  the  twenty-six  volumes 
written  by  Thackeray  himself.  "A  dip  into  the  volume 
at  random,"  to  quote  from  one  of  his  volumes  now, 
'*and  so  on  for  a  page  or  two;  and  now  and  then  a 
smile  [almost  indispensable  to  this  ante-somnolent  con- 
dition] ;  and  presently  a  gape ;  and  then  the  book  drops 
out  of  your  hand;  and  so  bon  soir,  and  pleasant 
dreams  to  you." 

Some  may  be  surprised  to  read  that  Thackeray 
should  be  considered  as  a  Good-Night  author;  they 
think  of  him  as  a  novelist  in  particular  and  as  a  cynic 
in  general.  As  a  novelist  he  writes  too  much  and  too 
sequaciously  for  a  good-nighter ;  and  as  a  cynic  he 
causes  snarls  and  sniffs,  not  smiles  and  easy  gapes :  so 
they  may  think. 

Would  that  Thackeray  might  draw  a  picture  of  such 
a  person !  Fancy  the  Punch  cartoon  he  would  make : 
Ten  heavy  volumes  on  table;  Reader  in  dressing- 
gown  and  nightcap,  glum,  frowning,  upright;  great 
misshapen  serpent  of  a  plot,  bestridden  by  scandalous 
little  devils  or  glooms,  winding  out  of  books  and  men- 
acing Sleep  as  he  stands  at  door;  under  table,  or  on 
shelf  behind  Reader's  back,  sixteen  other  volumes, 
dusty  but  jovially  beckoning,  with  joys,  fancies,  oddi- 
ties, bulging  out  between  pages  and  stitching,  like  ani- 
mals ©ut  of  a  Noah's  Ark  or  that  bewildering,  unsup- 
pered  lot  of  children  out  of  the  Old  Woman's  Home 


I 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  iS3 

in  a  Shoe.  And  a  strange  thing  about  the  picture 
would  be  that  after  one  had  seen  the  jovial  volumes 
on  the  shelf,  he  would  see  other  perky  little  joys  peek- 
ing out  of  those  ten  heavy  novel  volumes  on  the  table, 
and  even  obscuring  the  devils  as  they  scampered  over 
the  folds  of  the  serpent-plot. 

For  what  about  this  cynic  nickname  ?  Bear  in  mind 
the  root  meaning — Greek,  kunikos;  Latin,  canis;  Eng- 
lish— dog.  And  to  get  momentarily  the  sensation  and 
mental  attitude  of  a  cynic,  just  lift  your  upper  lip 
so  as  to  expose  the  tips  of  your  canine  teeth.  There! 
you  cannot  hold  it  long:  neither  could  Thackeray! 
If  one's  impression  from  his  novels  has  induced  the 
belief  that  he  could  long  act  the  cynic,  a  hasty  study 
of  his  life  and  other  works  will  doubtless  be  enough 
to  eradicate  or  to  modify  that  impression. 

There  is  a  contrasting  impression  that  Thackeray 
makes,  as  extreme,  perhaps,  as  this  of  cynicism,  but 
nevertheless  a  good  and  necessary  foil  to  it.  Char- 
lotte Bronte,  in  a  dedication  prefixed  to  the  second 
edition  of  Jane  Eyre,  wrote  as  follows : 

"There  is  a  man  in  our  own  days  whose  words  are  not 
framed  to  tickle  delicate  ears :  who,  to  my  thinking,  comes 
before  the  great  ones  of  society  much  as  the  son  of  Imlah 
came  before  the  throned  Kings  of  Judah  and  Israel;  and 
who  speaks  truth  as  deep,  with  a  power  as  prophet-like  and 
as  vital — a  mien  as  dauntless  and  as  daring.  ...  I  think  if 
some  of  those  amongst  whom  he  hurls  the  Greek  fire  of  his 
sarcasm,  and  over  whom  he  flashes  the  levin-brand  of  his 
denunciation,  were  to  take  his  warnings  in  time — they  or 
their  seed  might  yet  escape  a  fatal  Ramoth-Gilead. 


154  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

"Why  have  I  alluded  to  this  man?  I  have  alluded  to  him, 
reader,  because  I  think  I  see  in  him  an  intellect  profounder 
and  more  unique  than  his  contemporaries  have  yet  recog- 
nized; because  I  regard  him  as  the  first  social  regenerator 
of  the  day — as  the  very  master  of  that  working  corps  who 
would  restore  to  rectitude  the  warped  system  of  things." 

These  words  refer  not  to  Carlyle,  but  to  the  author 
of  various  and  sundry  sketches,  satires,  burlesques,  es- 
says and  criticisms ;  to  the  man  who  had  recently  pub- 
lished his  first  novel,  entitled  Vanity  Fair, 

Now,  of  course,  Thackeray  was  not  merely  a  cynic 
nor  a  buffoon,  nor  primarily  a  prophet  and  social  re- 
generator. Yet  he  surely  resembles  Carlyle  more 
closely  than  he  does  Dean  Swift  or — Bill  Nye.  And 
more  and  more  he  impresses  one  as  being  a  mixture 
of  all  that  was  best  in  Carlyle  on  the  one  hand,  and 
in  Charles  Lamb  on  the  other — with,  of  course,  other 
elements,  which,  to  parody  Lowell's  description  of  Irv- 
ing, were 

Neither  Scottish  nor  Cockney,  just  Thackeray. 

On  this  point  let  us  hear  first  the  sequel  of  the  Jane 
Eyre  dedication,  and  then  see  what  Thackeray  really 
tried  to  do.  When  Charlotte  Bronte  wrote  the  dedi- 
cation quoted  above,  she  was  young,  enthusiastic, 
serious-minded,  and  acquainted  with  Thackeray  only 
through  his  works.  There  is  an  anecdote,  of  doubt- 
ful authenticity  but  surely  true  in  spirit,  concerning 
the  first  meeting  of  the  two  at  a  formal  dinner.  The 
account  runs  as  follows: 


i 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  I5S 

"The  tiny  creature  had  idealized  Thackeray,  personally 
unknown  to  her,  with  a  passion  of  idealization.  'Behold,  a 
lion  Cometh  out  of  the  North  !*  she  quoted  under  her  breath, 
as  Thackeray  entered  the  drawing-room.  Some  one  repeated 
it  to  him.  *0h.  Lord !'  said  Thackeray,  'and  Fm  nothing  but 
a  poor  devil  of  an  Englishman,  ravenous  for  my  dinner!' 
At  dinner  Miss  Bronte  was  placed  opposite  Thackeray  by 
her  own  request.  'And  I  had,*  said  he,  'the  miserable  humilia- 
tion of  seeing  her  ideal  of  him  disappearing  down  my  own 
throat,  as  everything  went  into  my  mouth  and  nothing  came 
out  of  it;  until  at  last,  as  I  took  my  fifth  potato,  she  leaned 
across,  with  clasped  hands  and  tears  in  her  eyes,  and  breathed 
imploringly,  "Oh,  Mr.  Thackeray !    Don't !"  '  " 

Now,  notwithstanding  the  fact  that  Thackeray's  great 
body  (he  was  six  feet  three)  doubtless  required  abun- 
dance of  food,  one  may  readily  believe  that  he  didn't 
want  more  than  three  potatoes  at  that  dinner. — ^He 
took  the  most  effective  way  of  checking  Miss  Bronte's 
sentimental  attitude.  Lamb  supplanted  similar  stilted 
sentimentalism  by  hearty  and  wholesome  laughter 
when  he  said:  "This  is  my  sister  Mary.  She  is  a 
very  good  woman,  but  she  d-d-drinks !" 

What  was  Thackeray  really  trying  to  do  in  his 
books  ?  Unquestionably  he  was  trying,  for  one  thing, 
to  earn  a  living — as  Carlyle  sarcastically  phrased  it, 
he  was  "writing  for  his  life."  But  in  doing  that  he 
was  as  consistent  in  method  and  in  purpose,  from  his 
first  articles  to  his  latest,  as  indomitable  Carlyle  him- 
self. 

In  Thackeray's  day  people  were  worshiping  Scott 
for  his  representation  of  past  times  as  superbly  good, 


156  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

noble,  and  romantic;  Dickens  for  representing  lower 
and  middle  classes  as  ineffably  tender,  sweet,  and 
lovely;  Bulwer-Lytton  for  depicting  a  life  which  never 
existed  in  terms  that  human  beings  could  never  con- 
sistently use;  Disraeli  and  others  for  idly  lolling  in 
sentiment ;  and  still  others  for  making  heroes  of  crimi- 
nals and  outcasts.  Thackeray's  keen  sense  of  humor, 
his  common  sense,  were  offended.  Why  deceive  our- 
selves? said  he.  Why  not  understand  that  human 
beings  are  not  simple,  not  linear  or  plane,  but  solid, 
complex,  mixtures  of  admirable  and  regrettable?  Why 
not  face  the  truth? 

We  have  several  frank  statements  of  all  this;  here 
are  two,  each  having  to  do  with  Vanity  Fair: 

"The  author  of  this  work  has  lately  been  described  by 
the  London  Times  newspaper  as  a  writer  of  considerable 
parts,  but  a  dreary  misanthrope,  who  sees  no  good  anywhere, 
who  sees  the  sky  above  him  green,  I  think,  instead  of  blue, 
and  only  miserable  sinners  around  him.  So  we  are,  as  is 
every  writer  and  reader  I  ever  heard  of,  so  was  every  being 
who  ever  trod  this  earth,  save  One.  I  cannot  help  telling 
the  truth  as  I  view  it,  and  describing  what  I  see.  To  de- 
scribe it  otherwise  than  it  seems  to  me  would  be  falsehood 
in  that  calling  in  which  it  has  pleased  Heaven  to  place  me; 
treason  to  that  conscience  which  says  that  men  are  weak; 
that  truth  must  be  told;  that  faults  must  be  owned;  that 
pardon  must  be  prayed  for;  and  that  love  reigns  supreme 
over  all." 

"My  kind  reader  will  please  to  remember  that  this  history 
has  Vanity  Fair  for  a  title,  and  that  Vanity  Fair  is  a  very 
vain,  wicked,  foolish  place,  full  of  all  sorts  of  humbugs  and 
falseness  and  pretensions. 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  i57 

"People  there  are  living  and  flourishing  in  the  world  .  .  . 
with  no  reverence  except  for  prosperity,  and  no  eye  for  any- 
thing beyond  success — faithless,  hopeless,  charityless.  Let  us 
have  at  them,  dear  friends,  with  might  and  main." 

It  is  worth  while  to  observe  closely  two  vivid  ex- 
amples of  the  stripped,  truthful  Thackeray  method  of 
presentation,  and  these,  as  most  striking  in  little,  from 
the  realm  of  pathos.  Recall  those  long  accounts  in 
Dickens  of  the  death  of  Paul  Dombey  and  that  of 
Sidney  Carton,  how  carefully  and  elaborately  the  stage 
is  set,  how  every  detail  is  utilized  to  its  fullest  extent 
as  a  means  of  inducing  heart-throbs  and  tears.  Listen 
by  contrast  to  these  by  Thackeray.  One  narrates  what 
happened  just  after  Samuel  Titmarsh  had  secured  new 
lodgings  in  Paris  for  his  wife  and  their  newborn 
child : 

"It  was  not,  however,  destined  that  she  and  her  child  should 
inhabit  that  little  garret.  We  were  to  leave  our  lodgings 
on  Monday  morning;  but  on  Saturday  evening  the  child  was 
seized  with  convulsions,  and  all  day  Sunday  the  mother 
watched  and  prayed  for  it;  but  it  pleased  God  to  take  the 
innocent  infant  from  us,  and  on  Sunday,  at  midnight,  it  lay 
a  corpse  in  its  mother's  bosom.  Amen.  We  have  other 
children,  happy  and  well,  now  round  about  us,  and  from  the 
father's  heart  the  memory  of  this  little  thing  has  almost 
faded;  but  I  do  believe  that  every  day  of  her  life  the  mother 
thinks  of  the  firstborn  that  was  with  her  for  so  short  a 
while :  many  and  many  a  time  has  she  taken  her  daughters  to 
the  grave,  in  Saint  Bride's,  where  he  lies  buried;  and  she 
wears  still  at  her  neck  a  little,  little  lock  of  gold  hair,  which 
she  took  from  the  head  of  the  infant  as  he  lay  smiling  in  his 
coffin.  It  has  happened  to  me  to  forget  the  child's  birthday, 
but  to  her  never;  and  often  in  the  midst  of  common  talk 


iS8  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

comes  something  that  shows  she  is  thinking  of  the  child 
still." 

The  other  passage  succeeds  a  description  of  the  city 
of  Brussels  during  the  battle  of  Waterloo  some  miles 
outside  of  the  city;  the  chapter,  a  critical  one  in  the 
story  of  Vanity  Fair,  ends  thus : 

"No  more  firing  was  heard  at  Brussels — the  pursuit  rolled 
miles  away.  Darkness  came  down  on  the  field  and  city :  and 
Amelia  was  praying  for  George,  who  was  lying  on  his  face, 
dead,  with  a  bullet  through  his  heart." 

The  briskness  of  thought,  the  good-nature  and  the 
good  sense  of  Thackeray,  faintly  indicated  by  these 
anecdotes  and  passages,  all  tend  to  produce  the  ante- 
somnolent  state  of  mind, — a  healthy  state  of  mind, 
one  good  for  rising  and  for  living  by  as  well ! 

Let  us  see  who  Thackeray  was  and  what  were  his 
memorable  experiences.  Like  so  many  other  English 
writers,  he  drifted  into  literature.  Born  in  Calcutta, 
the  only  son  of  a  high-grade  civil  service  employee, 
educated  at  the  Charterhouse,  the  school  of  Addison 
and  Steele,  he  spent  a  few  months  at  Trinity  College, 
Cambridge.  His  patrimony  was  large  and  his  inter- 
ests were  varied.  He  traveled ;  attempted  law,  only  to 
find  it  too  "cold-blooded" ;  studied  and  practised  draw- 
ing— ^he  was  rejected  by  Dickens  as  an  illustrator  for 
Pickwick  Papers.  He  lost  large  sums  of  money  in 
newspaper  and  other  legitimate  ventures,  also  some 
money  in  gambling,  and  was  at  length  compelled  to 
work  for  his  bread. 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  IS9 

He  made  the  most  of  his  opportunities  in  jour- 
nalism; and,  although  much  that  he  wrote  consisted 
of  purely  ephemeral  sketches  and  burlesques,  he  had 
serious  articles  also  on  the  annual  art  exhibitions,  and 
his  review  of  Carlyle's  French  Revolution  was  notably 
discriminating  and  appreciative.  His  sketches  and 
tales  suggested  Fielding  and  Goldsmith,  but  for  some 
reason  they  did  not  find  favor  with  the  public.  Even 
in  Punch,  which  was  established  by  several  of  his 
friends  in  1841,  his  early  contributions  (there  were 
380  in  all  before  he  severed  the  connection  in  185 1) 
secured  him  no  very  wide  attention.  At  last,  in  1847- 
1848,  with  a  novel  distinct  in  tone  from  others  which 
were  being  published,  with  Vanity  Fair,  he  won  rec- 
ognition. Mrs.  Carlyle  promptly  wrote  to  Carlyle  that 
Thackeray  "beats  Dickens  out  of  the  world." 

His  other  great  novels  followed :  Pendennis  ( 1848), 
Henry  Esmond  (1852),  The  Newcomes  (1855),  ^^^ 
The  Virginians  (1857).  In  1852  he  came  to  America 
in  company  with  James  Russell  Lowell  to  deliver  his 
lectures  on  The  English  Humorists.  In  1855  he  made 
another  lecture  tour  in  America  with  The  Four 
Georges.  Each  tour  was  undertaken  largely  to  pro- 
vide for  the  support  of  his  daughters. 

After  the  appearance  of  Vanity  Fair,  the  relations 
between  Dickens  enthusiasts  and  Thackeray  enthusi- 
asts had  often  become  bitter.  The  two  authors,  on 
the  contrary,  who  knew  each  other  well,  had  gone  on 
doing  their  work,  and  each  had  maintained  a  healthy 
friendship  for  the  other.  At  length,  a  difference  of 
opinion  over  a  mutual  friend,  aggravated  by  some 


i6o  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

indiscreet  expressions  from  each  man,  created  a  wide 
and  most  unfortunate  breach  between  them.  Just  a 
few  days  before  Thackeray's  death,  however,  it  is 
pleasant  to  record,  they  met  on  the  steps  of  a  build- 
ing in  London,  passed  coldly,  then  turned  at  the  same 
moment  and  spontaneously  shook  hands.  Neither 
writer,  it  is  pleasant  to  record  further,  has  received 
more  glowing  tributes  than  those  recorded  by  the 
other. 

But  little  additional  information  about  Thackeray 
is  necessary.  His  most  important  productions  as  an 
essayist  appeared  late  in  his  life  in  the  Cornhill  Maga- 
zine, of  which  he  was  the  first  editor.  Tennyson, 
Trollope,  and  'Ruskin  were  among  the  contributors. 
And  the  series  prepared  by  Thackeray  under  the 
title  of  Roundabout  Papers  reflect  his  most  charming 
and  most  wholesome  moods. 

His  last  novels,  Lovel  the  Widower,  The  Adventures 
of  Philip,  and  Denis  Duval,  also  appeared  in  Corn- 
hill.  The  third  of  these  was  left  incomplete  at  Thack- 
eray's death  on  December  24,  1863.  People  whose 
sentimentalism  Thackeray  himself  would  doubtless 
have  approved,  find  significance  in  the  last  words  which 
Thackeray  penned :  "And  his  heart  throbbed  with  an 
exquisite  bliss." 

Thackeray's  daughter  tells  us  that  Roundabout  Pa- 
pers constitute  a  virtual  diary  of  his  last,  that  is,  of 
his  ripest,  his  happiest  years.  There  the  great-hearted 
man  shows  clearly  that  his  early  buffoonery  and  near- 
cynicism  were  at  best  but  a  mask.    These  essays,  best 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  i6i 

of  all  his  writings,  perhaps,  induce  a  good-night  spirit. 
And  more  and  more  a  reader  of  these  and  others  of 
his  essays  and  sketches  becomes  conscious  that  Thack- 
eray, like  Carlyle,  yet  after  his  own  peculiar  fashion, 
was  engaged  in  the  great  conflict  for  truth,  and  for 
genuineness. 

JOHNRUSKIN  (1819-1900) 
Chronology 

1819  Born,  February  18,  in  London.    Juvenilia. 

1833  Tour  of  Europe.    Tutors.    Other  tours. 

1836-1843  At  Christ  Church  (College),  Oxford.  Prizes. 
Illness.  Geological  studies  and  writings.  De- 
fense of  Turner.    1840,  introduced  to  Turner. 

1843  First  volume  of  Modern  Painters;  others — 1846, 
1856,  1856,  i860.  Love  affairs:  wrote  King  of 
the  Golden  River  (1841)  for  a  Miss  Gray,  whom 
he  married  in  1848;  marriage  annulled  in  1854. 

1849  Seven  Lamps  of  Architecture.  1 851-1853,  Stones 
of  Venice.  Textbooks.  1857,  Political  Economy 
of  Art.    1859,  The  Two  Paths. 

i860  Unto  This  Last  in  Cornhill.  Lectures:  1865,  Ses- 
ame and  Lilies;  Crown  of  Wild  Olive;  Ethics  of 
the  Dust.    1867,  Time  and  Tide. 

1871  Purchased  Brantwood  on  Coniston  Lake.  Social 
experiments. 

1878-1884  Slade  Professor  of  Fine  Arts,  Oxford. 
Whistler  episode.    Weakness.    Friends. 

1900  Died,  January  20.    Buried  at  Coniston. 

In  these  studies  we  have  necessarily  maintained 
pretty  consistently  the  attitude  of  reverence.  Our  rev- 
erence would  probably  be  more  healthy  and  whole- 
souled,  in  many  cases,  if  we  were  aware  of  the  other 


i62  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

estimates  of  our  divinities  which  have  at  times  been 
freely  proclaimed.  Not  all  Americans  of  about  1870, 
for  example,  in  arranging  each  his  little  private  gal- 
lery of  extraordinary  men — not  all  of  these  v^ould, 
like  Lowell,  have  placed  Emerson  in  the  Hall  of  Fame ; 
some  would  have  shoved  him  into  the  adjoining  crypt 
of  infamy  and  labeled  him  fool.  And  many  English- 
men of  about  the  same  time,  if  challenged  to  produce 
Emerson's  counterpart  in  folly,  would  have  thrust  for- 
ward two  candidates:  one  the  cranky,  crusty  Carlyle; 
the  other  the  ribald,  wrangling  Ruskin.  We  shall  ap- 
preciate Ruskin  ultimately  all  the  more  if  we  look 
at  him  for  a  moment  from  this  angle. 

To  begin  with,  this  fellow  Ruskin  was  always  say- 
ing things,  always  saying  them  forcibly,  and  always 
neglecting  to  determine  whether  or  not  they  would 
be  pleasant  to  hear.  Such  a  man  is  bound  to  create 
awkward  situations.  Further,  instead  of  exercising 
his  volubility  in  the  field  of  art,  where  it  would  have 
been  diverting  and  harmless,  this  Ruskin  kept  poking 
into  all  sorts  of  things.  In  his  ever- forcible  way  he 
told  peasants  that  their  moral  defects  were  openly 
displayed  by  their  cottage  walls  and  chimneys;  small 
towns,  that  their  monumented  squares  were  invisible 
behind  the  heaps  of  waste  paper  and  broken  bottles 
in  their  back  alleys;  "restorers"  of  ancient  architecture, 
that  they  were  vandals  more  culpable  than  Henry  VHI 
or  the  Roundheads;  great  and  prosperous  merchants, 
that  they  were  really  mere  gamblers;  loyal  soldiers, 
that  they  existed  chiefly  to  destroy  surplus  popula- 
tion; the  government,  that  it  failed  utterly  to  appre- 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  163 

date  its  true  function;  political  economists,  that  their 
talk  of  "supply  and  demand,"  "wealth,"  labor,  capital, 
and  so  on,  was  but  purposeless  pother.  He  also  gave 
money  broadcast  to  young  authors  and  artists — few  of 
whom  came  to  anything.  And  he  tried  experiments 
in  manufacturing,  in  farming,  and  in  education — most 
of  which  were  ludicrous  and  speedy  failures.  Not  a 
knave,  perhaps,  this  fellow  Ruskin;  but  surely  a 
fool! 

What  of  the  sequel?  A  circle  of  young  artists,  the 
Pre-Raphaelites,  acting  upon  Ruskin's  theory  of  art, 
became  the  most  noted  of  nineteenth  century  artists. 
Turner,  the  English  painter  whom  Ruskin  may  be  said 
to  have  discovered,  occupies  more  space  in  British 
galleries  to-day  than  perhaps  ten  other  painters  put 
together.  Long  since,  architects  and  others  ceased  at- 
tempting to  "restore"  ancient  architecture;  steadily 
these  architects  have  been  approximating  Ruskin's 
dominant  conceptions  of  what  is  honest,  appropriate, 
and  truly  beautiful  in  architecture.  Of  his  social 
tenets,  that  concerning  war  as  promoted  chiefly  by  capi- 
talists who  either  lend  money  to  combatants  or  manu- 
facture their  implements  for  profit,  has  often  of  late 
received  striking  confirmation.  Ruskin's  efforts  to 
revive  the  joy  of  work,  moreover,  are  represented 
to-day  in  our  Arts  and  Crafts  movement  and  in  the 
extension  of  Vocational  Training.  The  old-age  pen- 
sions which  he  favored  have  been  granted  by  most 
nations  in  Europe,  and  are  likely  soon  to  be  resorted 
to  in  America.  Social  settlements,  social-service  ac- 
tivities of  all  sorts,  civic  and  village  improvement 


i64  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

societies,  the  custom  of  preserving  great  and  strik- 
ing beauties  of  nature,  all,  consciously  or  uncon- 
sciously, are  carrying  out  ideas  advanced  by  Ruskin. 
And  though  back  alleys  are,  to  be  sure,  still  thick  with 
paper  and  bottles;  though  many  cities  are  still  built 
(as  he  said)  "for  labor  and  not  for  life";  though  we 
still  dress  our  productive  laborers  in  mean  clothes  and 
our  soldiers  in  bright  ones  (instead  of  in  the  black 
which  alone,  he  said,  is  appropriate  to  executioners)  ; 
though  capital  and  labor  are  still  at  odds,  and  our  no- 
tion of  wealth  still  comprehends  coin  rather  than 
happiness, — the  sequel  is  not  completed. 

What  are  the  important  elements  which  composed 
this  powerful,  far-seeing  man?  Take  a  nature  more 
sensitive  than  Leigh  Hunt's,  a  mind  more  compre- 
hensive and  more  precocious  than  Macaulay's,  a  hand 
almost  as  skilful  as  Turner's  own,  an  altruism  which 
has  perhaps  been  a  model  for  our  greatest  philan- 
thropists, an  insight  and  a  vigor  as  great  as  Car- 
lyle's,  and  a  facility  of  expression  greater  than  Steven- 
son's. Endow  this  nature  with  a  million  and  more 
of  money,  and  with  an  education  practically  complete 
in  natural  science  and  in  the  fine  arts.  Then  set  the 
nature  thus  endowed  in  the  midst  of  a  nation  grip- 
ping the  world  through  its  commerce  and  its  manu- 
factures, a  nation  which  gloried  in  a  London  and  a 
Manchester  which  few  could  see  for  smoke  and  soot, 
a  nation  which  bayoneted  China  into  furnishing  a 
market  for  British  opium.  The  title  of  fool  was  as 
certain  to  come  to  him  as  clouds  to  the  summit  of 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  165 

his  favorite  Mt.  Coniston.  One  who  reads  him  widely, 
moreover,  comes  to  feel  that  the  title  of  fool  is  certain 
to  be  succeeded  by  that  of  seer  and  saint. 

Until  about  his  thirty-fifth  year,  Ruskin  was  in- 
terested primarily  in  art.  He  had  been  born  and  bred 
to  love  pictures  and  all  beautiful  objects.  At  twenty- 
three  he  had  written  upon  art,  the  first  volume  of 
Modern  Painters.  But  as  he  went  up  and  down  enjoy- 
ing the  beauties  of  landscapes  and  the  works  of  the 
great  masters,  he  grew  troubled  over  the  fact  that 
other  men  seemed  not  to  enjoy  these  things,  and  that 
no  paintings  nor  buildings  nor  ornaments  at  all  com- 
parable in  beauty  to  works  of  past  great  masters  were 
being  produced.  His  curious,  analytic  mind  set  to 
work  to  determine  the  cause.  At  length  he  concluded 
that  the  fault  lay  in  men's  ideals.  He  endeavored 
at  first  to  preach  along  with  his  doctrine  of  beauty 
a  gospel  above  that  of  profits  and  mechanical  effi- 
ciency. Finally,  he  gave  up  attempting  to  teach  both, 
and  selected  for  emphasis  during  the  rest  of  his  life 
the  doctrines  of  true  happiness  and  true  progress  which 
had  crystallized  in  his  mind.  Unto  This  Last  marks 
the  beginning  of  Ruskin's  sociological  period. 

No  author  whom  we  consider  has  made  more  fre- 
quent nor  more  severe  attacks  upon  the  rich,  more 
moving  representations  of  the  poor.  Yet  Ruskin,  more 
truly  even  than  Thackeray,  was  born  with  a  golden 
spoon  in  his  mouth.  You  will  scarcely  find  in  Dick- 
ens more  pitiful  contrasts  between  the  sordid  and  the 
beautiful,  the  starving  and  the  surfeited;  yet  while 


i66  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

Dickens  suffered  the  sharpest  pangs  of  poverty  and 
wrote  fiction,  Ruskin,  who  wrote  fact,  never  felt  the 
pinch  of  poverty. 

Ruskin's  father  was  a  wealthy  merchant.  John,  his 
only  son,  was  born  in  London,  February  i8,  1819.  His 
boyish  experiences  included  much  reading  of  the  Bible 
with  his  mother,  and  extensive  memorizing  of  passages 
from  it;  careful  and  long-continued  examination  of 
natural  objects,  such  as  flowers  or  an  ant-colony  in 
his  father's  garden;  and  glorious  long  posting  (driv- 
ing) tours  over  England  with  his  mother  and  father, 
for  the  double  purpose  of  taking  orders  for  wine  and 
of  seeing  famous  valleys  and  mountains  and,  in  pri- 
vate houses  and  public  museums,  great  pictures.  He 
never  was  allowed  to  look  at  what  his  father,  himself 
a  discriminating  critic,  considered  a  bad  picture.  And 
on  Stmdays,  from  no  narrow  Puritan  spirit  but  as  a 
fit  form  of  self-denial,  it  was  the  custom  in  the  family 
home  to  turn  favorite  pictures  face  to  the  wall. 

At  four  years  of  age  he  could  read  and  write;  at 
seven  he  composed  numerous  stories,  and  the  next  year 
wrote  endless  verses.  Tutors  in  the  classics  and  in 
drawing,  and  a  course  interrupted  by  illness  at  Ox- 
ford, did  something  for  his  education.  Since  natural 
science  and  the  fine  arts  were  not  then  subjects  of 
University  study,  his  travels  over  England  and  the 
Continent,  his  reading,  and  his  passionate  contempla- 
tion of  art,  of  architecture,  of  plants,  and  of  mineral 
and  geological  phenomena  did  much  more  for  his  real 
education. 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  167 

The  scientific  significance  and  the  inherent  beauty 
of  things  were  one  to  him.  He  had  no  patience  with 
the  tendency  to  regard  them  as  distinct.  "Oxford 
taught  me  as  much  Greek  and  Latin  as  she  could," 
he  afterwards  said;  "and,  though  I  think  that  she 
might  also  have  told  me  that  fritillaries  grew  in  Iffley 
meadow,  it  was  better  that  she  left  me  to  find  them 
for  myself  than  that  she  should  have  told  me,  as 
nowadays  she  would,  that  the  painting  on  them  was 
only  to  amuse  the  midges." 

Those  juvenile  compositions  of  Ruskin's  were  of 
course  insignificant.  Even  before  he  entered  Oxford, 
however,  he  began  serious  writing.  He  soon  aban- 
doned poetry  as  a  form  in  which  "he  could  express 
nothing  rightly  that  he  had  to  say."  And  his  prose 
compositions  soon  came  to  deal  chiefly  with  art.  The 
nom  de  plume  which  he  adopted  is  significant — ^Kata 
Phusin  (according  to  nature)  ;  it  indicates  the  touch- 
stone which  he  persistently  and  intelligently  applied 
to  all  art  objects.  Turner  (J.  M.  W.,  Esq.),  then  still 
living,  impressed  him  more  and  more  as  one  who 
painted  "according  to  nature."  In  1843,  Ruskin  pub- 
lished a  volume  maintaining  the  superiority  of  mod- 
erns in  landscape  painting;  the  title  he  had  selected 
indicated  whom  the  volume  treated  as  chief  of  the 
moderns — it  was  Turner  and  the  Ancients;  but  the 
publishers  persuaded  him  to  call  it  Modern  Painters. 
Continuations  of  this  work,  making  it  a  comprehensive 
treatise  on  art,  appeared  in  successive  volumes  to  the 
number  of  five,  the  last  in  i860.  It  abounds  in  those 
flights  of  impassioned  prose  in  which  Ruskin  sur- 


i68  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

passes  De  Quincey ;  even  if  his  sociological  and  artistic 
theories  are  forgotten,  these  passages  in  Modern  Paint- 
ers and  elsewhere  are  likely  to  survive. 

The  Seven  Lamps  of  Architecture  (1849),  Notes 
on  the  Construction  of  Sheep  folds  (1851),  Stones  of 
Venice  (1853),  and  The  Political  Economy  of  Art 
(1857)  further  expressed  his  theories.  It  was  during 
this  period  that  the  Pre-Raphaelites  developed,  Ruskin 
encouraging  them.  It  was  also  during  this  period 
that  Ruskin's  difficulties  as  an  art-collector  became 
painful;  the  confidence  in  his  judgment  was  so  great 
that  any  picture  which  he  wished  to  purchase  was 
at  once  bid  up  very  high,  and  a  picture  he  did  not 
care  for  could  hardly  be  sold  at  all.  Needless  to  say, 
all  the  painters  feared  him,  and  more  hated  him  than 
loved  him. 

He  published  technical  treatises  on  Drawing,  and 
actually  taught  classes  at  a  workingmen's  college. 
He  must  have  been  a  discouraging  teacher.  A  pupil 
tells  of  watching  him  at  work  copying  a  picture  in  a 
gallery:  Ruskin  would  examine  some  apparently  in- 
significant detail  of  the  picture,  such  as  a  thread  in 
a  dress,  for  -five  minutes,  and  would  then  swiftly  draw 
it  on  his  own  canvas.  Naturally  his  paintings,  both 
copies  and  originals,  are  not  in  all  numerous,  and  most 
of  them  are  only  partially  completed ;  but  his  best  work 
may  readily  be  mistaken  for  Turner's. 

Ruskin's  wife,  to  whom  he  had  proposed  at  the 
suggestion  of  his  parents,  and  whom  he  married  in 
1848,  is  memorable  for  us  chiefly  as  the  inspiration  of 
The  King  of  the  Golden  River,    Ruskin  wrote  it  for 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  169 

her  in  two  sittings  in  184 1.  In  1854,  their  marriage 
was  annulled,  and  she  later  became  the  wife  of  the 
painter  Millais. 

Soon  after  this  came  that  complete  transformation 
in  Ruskin's  life  already  referred  to.  He  had  been 
growing  ever  more  sensitive  to  the  hammer-blows 
struck  by  Carlyle  in  Sartor,  in  Heroes,  in  Chartism,  in 
Past  and  Present.  In  all  his  attempts  to  secure  prac- 
tical application  of  his  art  teachings,  he  had  been 
met  by  the  same  impossible  intellectual  and  indus- 
trial conditions.  What  Carlyle  called  a  "divine  rage 
against  falsity"  at  length  isolated  Ruskin  completely. 
For  a  time,  he  says  ironically,  he  felt  such  a  peace 
as  might  one  "buried  ...  in  a  tuft  of  grass  on  a 
battlefield  wet  with  blood."  Finally  he  acted  upon 
the  thought  which  for  ten  years  had  been  taking  deep 
root  in  his  mind,  the  thought  quoted  at  the  begin- 
ning of  our  treatment  of  Carlyle:  "It  is  no  time  for 
the  idleness  of  metaphysics  or  the  entertainment  of 
the  arts."  And  in  i860  his  newest  convictions  began 
to  appear  in  the  new  Cornhill  Magazine,  of  which  his 
friend,  Thackeray,  was  the  kind-hearted  editor.  The 
first  three  papers,  startling  and  excoriating  to  con- 
temporaries, raised  such  a  hubbub  of  disapproval  that 
Thackeray  had  to  tell  Ruskin  that  he  could  publish  but 
one  more.  The  four  are  known  as  Unto  This  Last. 
A  sequel,  now  known  as  Munera  Pulveris,  was  started 
in  Fraser's  Magazine  in  1862 ;  it  too  had  to  be  discon- 
tinued, this  time  at  the  command  of  the  curator  of 
subscriptions,  the  publisher. 

Ruskin,  the  indefatigable,  published*  both  in  book 


170  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

form,  duly  prefaced  and  annotated.  And  in  lectures 
up  and  down  the  country,  in  The  Two  Paths  (1859), 
Sesame  and  Lilies  (1865),  A  Crown  of  Wild  Olive 
(1866),  Ethics  of  the  Dust  (1866),  Time  and  Tide 
( 1867) ,  and  Fors  Clavigera  ( 1871 ) ,  he  proclaimed  and 
reiterated  his  principles. 

The  excellence  of  a  product,  said  Ruskin,  is  to  be 
judged  less  by  the  product  itself  than  by  its  influence 
on  the  life  of  its  producers;  wealth,  he  maintained, 
is  significant  only  as  it  develops  human  life;  and, 
further,  not  competition  but  helpfulness,  cooperation, 
contains  the  secret  of  life. 

Of  the  practical  applications  of  these  principles 
which  he  proposed  may  be  mentioned  a  system  of  na- 
tional education,  the  thorough  organization  of  labor, 
the  establishment  of  government  training  schools,  the 
provision  of  old-age  pensions,  and  the  maintenance 
of  decent  homes  for  the  working-classes.  These 
were  the  things  once  howled  out  of  the  magazines.  It 
is  well  known  how  we  regard  each  to-day,  and  what 
credit  we  should  assign  to  Ruskin  in  consequence.  Rus- 
kin also  spent  great  sums  of  money  in  promoting  agri- 
cultural, industrial,  and  artistic  experiments.  His 
patrimony  of  at  least  a  million  dollars  was  entirely 
dispersed  by  him  in  these  ways.  The  artist,  the  social 
theorist,  thus  became  the  practical  social  reformer. 

In  1878  he  was  made  (the  first)  Slade  Professor  of 
Fine  Arts  at  Oxford.  The  same  year  he  made  some 
contemptuous  reference  to  Whistler.  That  eccentric 
painter  brought  action  for  libel,  and  was  at  length 
awarded  damages  of  one  farthing.     Ruskin's  costs, 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  171 

necessarily  very  great,  were,  like  Newman's  under 
similar  circumstances,  defrayed  by  popular  subscrip- 
tion. It  appears  that  the  party  willing  to  count  Rus- 
kin  as  a  seer  was  a  very  considerable  one. 

But  the  end  of  Ruskin's  active,  stormy  life  was  ap- 
proaching. Broken  in  health,  bent  by  the  still  clam- 
orous calumny  of  those  who  opposed  him,  Ruskin 
worked  on  at  the  duties  of  his  professorship,  lectur- 
ing, revising  his  art  teaching,  even  preparing  guide- 
books to  foreign  cities  of  prime  importance  in  art. 
At  length,  however,  in  1884,  when  the  authorities  de- 
nied his  drawing  school  some  needed  funds  but  appro- 
priated funds  for  a  laboratory  where  vivisection  was 
to  be  practised,  Ruskin  resigned. 

He  withdrew  to  his  estate,  Brantwood,  on  the  shore 
of  Lake  Coniston,  and  the  years  passed  often  pain- 
fully but  uneventfully.  Some  autobiographical  writ- 
ing which  he  undertook,  Praeterita  Dilecta,  was  never 
completed.  Even  young  people  may  remember  the 
newspaper  headlines  announcing  his  death  on  Janu- 
ary 20,  1900,  and  his  burial  in  the  village  cemetery 
of  Coniston,  the  offer  of  a  grave  in  Westminster  hav- 
ing been  declined. 

It  is  almost  a  generation  since  the  last  of  his  essays 
was  published,  since  the  last  of  what  Carlyle  called 
his  "fierce  lightning  bolts"  was  hurled.  The  flashes 
and  the  detonations  of  the  successive  bolts  still  re- 
flect and  reverberate.  Their  mission  seems  surely  to 
have  been  electrifying,  not  annihilating,  as  so  many 
men  then  supposed.    Carlyle's  practical  teaching  was 


172  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

depressing,  destructive;  Emerson's  was  uplifting,  but 
for  the  most  part  not  immediately  practicable;  this 
man's  was  constructive,  hopeful,  power-engendering. 
It  is  hard  to  say  how  much  of  Economics  and  So- 
ciology as  they  are  now  studied  and  being  put  into 
practise  has  been  contributed  by  Ruskin,  precisely  how 
much  of  modern  conceptions  of  art  and  architecture 
we  owe  to  him.  Certainly,  as  students  of  the  essay 
and  as  participants  in  active  life,  we  cannot  easily 
know  too  much  of  John  Ruskin. 

MATTHEW  ARNOLD   (1822-1888) 
Chronology 
1822  Born,    December    24,    at    Laleham;    son    of    Dr. 

Thomas  Arnold,  later   (1828  ff.)   headmaster  of 

Rugby. 
1837-1841  Student  at  Rugby.    Prizes. 
1841-1845  Student  at  Balliol  College,  Oxford.     Prizes. 

Fellow  at  Oriel,  1845. 
1847  Private  secretary  to  Marquis  of  Lansdowne,  ad- 
ministrator of  public  instruction.     Arnold  later 

(1851)  made  inspector  of  schools. 
1849  ^^^  Strayed  Reveler  and  Other  Poems — by  Arnold, 

Clough,  and  others. 
1852  Empedocles  on  AStna.    1853,  Poems.    1855,  Poems. 
1857-1867  Professor  of  Poetry  at  Oxford. 
1861-1862  On  Translating  Homer — lectures.     1867,  On 

the  Study  of  Celtic  Literature.     1865,  Essays  in 

Criticism. 
1869  Culture  and  Anarchy.    1875,  Literature  and  Dogma. 
1883  Pensioned  by  Gladstone,    Lecture  tour  in  America. 
1888  Sudden  death  at  Liverpool,  April  15. 

Matthew  Arnold  was  the  eldest  son  of  the  famous 
Dr.  Thomas  Arnold,  long  the  headmaster  of  the  great 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  i73 

English  school  at  Rugby.  Matthew  Arnold  received 
his  school  education  at  Rugby,  where  he  was  a  bril- 
liant scholar.  At  Balliol  College,  Oxford,  he  likewise 
made  a  brilliant  record.  Soon  after  his  graduation 
he  became  an  inspector  of  schools,  and  throughout  his 
life  he  expended  a  great  part  of  his  energy  and  his 
intellect  on  the  humdrum  tasks  which  this  office  im- 
posed upon  him. 

The  late  evenings  he  spent  upon  the  more  congenial 
task  of  writing,  and  from  the  time  when  his  first 
poems  appeared  in  1849  ^^til  his  Discourses  in  Amer- 
ica were  published  in  1885,  he  produced  a  vast  amount 
of  carefully  wrought,  exquisite  verse,  and  of  thought- 
ful, memorable  criticism. 

His  skill  as  a  poet  secured  him  in  middle  age  the 
office  of  Professor  of  Poetry  at  Oxford.  Some  of  his 
lectures  in  this  capacity,  notably  those  On  Translating 
Homer  and  On  the  Study  of  Celtic  Literature,  are 
among  the  most  enduring  critical  works  in  the  Eng- 
lish language.  In  1883  England  recognized  his  at- 
tainments by  giving  him  a  pension.  He  visited  Amer- 
ica twice,  in  1883  and  again  in  1886.  Problems  of 
literature,  of  politics,  and  of  religion  engaged  his 
most  earnest  and  enthusiastic  efforts.  His  death  from 
heart  disease  came  suddenly  at  Liverpool  in  April, 
1888.    Such  is  the  simple  story  of  his  outward  life. 

If  Matthew  Arnold  came  early  in  a  study  of  nine- 
teenth century  essayists,  one  would  almost  despair  of 
being  able  to  interest  inexperienced  readers  in  him. 
He  had  an  unromantic  life — inspector  (# schools,  one- 


174  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

time  Professor  at  Oxford,  poet,  lecturer,  controver- 
sialist, essayist.  His  feats  as  a  swimmer  constitute 
the  only  incident  in  his  biography  which  may  certainly 
be  calculated  to  make  people  in  general  really  look 
alive.  And  for  students  or  readers  who  still  require 
of  an  author  that  he  slap  them  on  the  back  or  nudge 
them  in  the  ribs  or  grip  them  by  the  arm  or  by  trap 
or  lasso  seize  and  hold  them — for  such  persons  Mat- 
thew Arnold  will  be  as  one  who  passes  by  on  the 
other  side.  There  is  little  cut  and  thrust,  little  draw- 
ing of  the  long  bow  of  thought,  little  of  enticing 
tintinnabulation  with  him.  He  is  less  startling  than 
Carlyle,  less  musical  and  less  passionate  than  Ruskin, 
more  intelligible — ^and  duller — than  Emerson. 

Yet  Matthew  Arnold  rightly  makes  a  fourth  with 
the  three  superb  essayists  and  thinkers  of  the  cen- 
tury. And  those  who  know  and  have  proved  the  de- 
lights of  thinking  as  they  read,  the  delights  of  per- 
ceiving wholeness  and  fitness  in  the  structure  and  ex- 
pression of  an  essay,  and  the  delights  of  feeling  good 
sense,  good  temper,  and  wisdom  reflected  from  pages 
of  print,  will  listen  eagerly  when  Arnold  sits  before 
them  talking. 

Matthew  Arnold  was  a  professional  critic.  He 
adopted  the  role  as  deliberately  and  as  heroically  as 
Ruskin  adopted  that  of  social  reformer,  as  Carlyle 
and  Emerson  adopted  that  of  preacher  in  the  vast 
church  of  letters.  Arnold^s  purpose  in  so  doing  was 
as  broad  and  as  high  as  that  of  any  of  these  other 
men.    He  was  a  critic  of  poetry,  of  books.    But  he 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  I7S 

was  more  than  that.  He  was  a  critic  of  current  po- 
litical thought,  of  current  religious  and  theological 
thought,  of  the  temper  and  spirit  and  ideals  of  nine- 
teenth century  Englishmen — including  Americans.  We 
shall  do  well  to  examine,  first,  a  sample  of  his  criti- 
cism ;  second,  his  purpose  as  a  critic ;  and,  third,  some 
of  the  important  principles  which  in  his  work  as  a 
critic  he  strove  to  inculcate. 

As  a  sample  of  his  criticism  let  us  take  his  analysis 
of  Emerson.  It  is  from  a  lecture  delivered  in  Bos- 
ton. He  has  related  how  to  him  as  a  student  at  Ox- 
ford the  voice  of  Newman  preaching  there  in  St. 
Mary's  Church,  the  voice  of  Carlyle  still  fresh  and 
clarion-like,  the  voice  of  Goethe  speaking  through  Car- 
lyle^ — all  three  came  powerful,  penetrating,  inspiring. 
Arnold  continues: 

"And  besides  those  voices,  there  came  to  us  in  that  old 
Oxford  time  a  voice  also  from  this  side  of  the  Atlantic, — a 
clear  and  pure  voice,  which  for  my  ear,  at  any  rate,  brought 
a  strain  as  new,  and  moving,  and  unforgettable,  as  the  strain 
of  Newman,  or  Carlyle,  or  Goethe.  Mr.  Lowell  has  well  de- 
scribed the  apparition  of  Emerson  to  your  young  generation 
here  in  that  distant  time  of  which  I  am  speaking,  and  of  his 
workings  upon  them.  He  was  your  Newman,  your  man  of 
soul  and  genius,  visible  to  you  in  the  flesh,  speaking  to  your 
bodily  ears,  a  present  object  for  your  heart  and  imagination. 
That  is  surely  the  most  potent  of  all  influences !  nothing  can 
come  up  to  it.  To  us  at  Oxford  Emerson  was  but  a  voice 
speaking  from  three  thousand  miles  away.  But  so  well  he 
spoke,  that  from  that  time  forth  Boston  Bay  and  Concord 
were  names  invested  to  my  ear  with  a  sentiment  akin  to  that 
which  invests  for  me  the  names  of  Oxford  and  of  Weimar; 


176  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

and  snatches  of  Emerson's  strain  fixed  themselves  in  my  mind 
as  imperishably  as  any  of  the  eloquent  words  which  I  have 
been  just  now  quoting.  'Then  dies  the  man  in  you;  then  once 
more  perish  the  buds  of  art,  poetry,  and  science,  as  they 
have  died  already  in  a  thousand  thousand  men  .  .  .  and  not 
pinched  in  a  corner,  not  cowards,  fleeing  before  a  revolution, 
but  redeemers  and  benefactors,  pious  aspirants  to  be  noble 
clay  plastic  under  the  Almighty  effort,  let  us  advance  and 
advance  on  chaos  and  the  dark.'  These  lofty  sentences  of 
Emerson,  and  a  hundred  others  of  like  strain,  I  never  have 
lost  out  of  my  memory;  I  never  can  lose  them." 

Arnold  then  points  out  that  Emerson  will  not  be 
known  to  remote  posterity  as  a  poet,  nor  as  a  great 
man  of  letters  at  all,  nor  even  as  a  philosopher.  Con- 
tinuing, he  says: 

"And  now  I  think  I  have  cleared  the  ground.  I  have  given 
up  to  envious  Time  as  much  of  Emerson  as  Time  can  fairly 
expect  ever  to  obtain.  We  have  not  in  Emerson  a  great  poet, 
a  great  writer,  a  great  philosophy  maker.  His  relation  to  us 
is  not  that  of  one  of  those  personages;  yet  it  is  a  relation  of, 
I  think,  even  superior  importance.  His  relation  to  us  is  more 
like  that  of  the  Roman  Emperor  Marcus  Aurelius.  Marcus 
Aurelius  is  not  a  great  writer,  a  great  philosophy  maker;  he 
is  the  friend  and  aider  of  those  who  would  live  in  the  spirit. 
Emerson  is  the  same.  He  is  the  friend  and  aider  of  those 
who  would  live  in  the  spirit.  All  the  points  in  thinking  which 
are  necessary  for  this  purpose  he  takes;  but  he  does  not 
combine  them  into  a  system,  or  present  them  as  a  regular 
philosophy.  Combined  in  a  system  by  a  man  with  the 
requisite  talent  for  this  kind  of  thing,  they  would  be  less 
useful  than  as  Emerson  gives  them  to  us ;  and  the  man  with 
the  talent  so  to  systematize  them  would  be  less  impressive 
than  Emerson." 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  I77 

He  goes  on  to  point  out  that  Emerson's  teaching  is 
characterized  by  hope,  by  optimism,  and  that  these 
quahties  justify  one  in  considering  Emerson  greater 
even  than  Carlyle.    He  concludes : 

"You  cannot  prize  him  too  much,  nor  heed  him  too  dili- 
gently. He  has  lessons  for  both  the  branches  of  our  race.  I 
figure  him  to  my  mind  as  physical  upon  earth  still,  as  still 
standing  here  by  Boston  Bay,  or  at  his  own  Concord,  in  his 
habit  as  he  lived,  but  of  heightened  stature  and  shining  fea- 
ture, with  one  hand  stretched  out  toward  the  East,  to  our 
laden  and  laboring  England;  the  other  towards  the  ever- 
growing West,  to  his  own  dearly-loved  America, — 'great,  in- 
telligent, sensual,  avaricious  America.'  To  us  he  shows  for 
guidance  his  lucid  freedom,  his  cheerfulness  and  hope;  to 
you  his  dignity,  delicacy,  serenity,  elevation." 

Perhaps  Arnold's  most  noted  literary  criticism  is 
contained  in  three  lectures  delivered  at  Oxford  On 
Translating  Homer.  In  these  lectures,  in  cogent,  con- 
crete, and  convincing  English,  he  emphasizes  points 
which  at  once  exalt  the  poetry  and  art  of  Homer, 
and  ennoble  the  task  of  a  careful  translator  of  Homer. 
This  essay  and  other  essays  must  be  read  to  be  appre- 
ciated for  the  criticism  which  they  include. 

In  all  this  criticism — ^of  Emerson,  of  translators,  of 
Homer,  of  Marcus  Aurelius,  and  of  all  the  other  topics 
which  he  treats — Arnold  was  fulfilling  a  purpose. 
What  was  the  conception  of  criticism  which  this  man 
had  and  which  made  him  even  forsake  the  career  of 
a  poet  for  that  of  a  critic?  We  get  a  clear  answer 
in  his  essay  on  The  Function  of  Criticism.  One  may 
dwell  upon  this  because  to  most  people  criticism — of 


178  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

themes,  of  books,  the  negative  or  unprogressive  atti- 
tude toward  a  new  movement — seems  pedantic,  dila- 
tory, unprofitable.  Here  are  some  brief  statements  of 
Arnold's  conception  of  criticism : 

"Its  business  is,  as  I  have  said,  simply  to  know  the  best  that 
is  known  and  thought  in  the  world,  and  by  in  its  turn  making 
this  known,  to  create  a  current  of  true  and  fresh  ideas.  Its 
business  is  to  do  this  with  inflexible  honesty,  with  due  ability ; 
...  its  business  is  to  keep  man  from  a  self-satisfaction  which 
is  retarding  and  vulgarizing,  to  lead  him  towards  perfection 
by  making  his  mind  dwell  upon  what  is  excellent  in  itself, 
and  the  absolute  beauty  and  fitness  of  things. 

"Judging  is  often  spoken  of  as  the  critic's  one  business, 
and  so  in  some  sense  it  is;  but  the  judgment  which  almost 
insensibly  forms  itself  in  a  fair  and  clear  mind,  along  with 
fresh  knowledge,  is  the  valuable  one ;  and  thus  knowledge  and 
ever  fresh  knowledge,  must  be  the  critic's  great  concern  for 
himself;  and  it  is  by  communicating  fresh  knowledge,  and 
letting  his  own  judgment  pass  along  with  it — but  insensibly, 
and  in  the  second  place,  not  the  first,  as  a  sort  of  companion 
and  clue,  not  as  an  abstract  law-giver — ^that  he  will  generally 
do  most  good  to  his  readers." 

Arnold  also  points  out  that  it  is  the  duty  of  criti- 
cism to  resist  the  establishment  of  institutions  with 
pretentious  but  misguided,  ill-balanced  purposes — "the 
grand  name  without  the  grand  thing,"  "to  be  per- 
petually dissatisfied  with  these  works,  while  they  per- 
petually fall  short  of  a  high  and  perfect  ideal."  The 
most  piercing  remark  in  the  essay,  moreover,  is  this: 
"let  us  in  the  meanwhile  rather  endeavor  that  in 
twenty  years'  time  it  may,  in  English  literature,  be  an 
objection  to  a  proposition  that  it  is  absurd.     That," 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  i79 

he  continues,  with  a  sarcasm  pardonable,  it  would 
seem,  to  this  day,  "that  will  be  a  change  so  vast  that 
the  imagination  almost  fails  to  grasp  it." 

One  other  passage  in  this  essay  strikingly  illus- 
trates the  need  and  the  function  of  criticism  as  Ar- 
nold conceived  them  when  he  wrote.  You  will  note 
something  of  both  Carlyle  and  Ruskin  in  the  thought : 

"Mr.  Adderley  says  to  the  Warwickshire  farmers:  'Talk 
of  the  improvement  of  breed !  Why,  the  race  we  ourselves 
represent,  the  men  and  women,  the  old  Anglo-Saxon  race, 
are  the  best  breed  in  the  whole  world.  .  .  .  The  absence  of 
a  too  enervating  climate,  too  unclouded  skies,  and  a  too 
luxurious  nature,  has  produced  so  vigorous  a  race  of  people, 
and  has  rendered  us  so  superior  to  all  the  world.* 

"Mr.  Roebuck  says  to  the  Sheffield  cutlers :  *I  look  around 
me  and  ask  what  is  the  state  of  England?  Is  not  property 
safe?  Is  not  every  man  able  to  say  what  he  likes?  Can 
you  not  walk  from  one  end  of  England  to  the  other  in  per- 
fect security?  I  ask  you  whether,  the  world  over  or  in  past 
history,  there  is  anything  like  it?  Nothing.  I  pray  that 
our  unrivalled  happiness  may  last.* 

"Now  obviously  there  is  a  peril  for  poor  human  nature 
in  words  and  thoughts  of  such  exuberant  self-satisfaction, 
until  we  find  ourselves  safe  in  the  streets  of  the  Celestial 
City.  .  .  .  But  let  criticism  ...  in  the  most  candid  spirit 
.  .  .  confront  with  our  dithyramb  this  paragraph  on  which 
I  stumbled  in  a  newspaper  immediately  after  reading  Mr. 
Roebuck:  *A  shocking  child  murder  has  just  been  com- 
mitted at  Nottingham.  A  girl  named  Wragg  left  the  work- 
house on  Saturday  morning  with  her  young  illegitimate  child. 
The  child  was  soon  afterwards  found  dead  on  Mapperly 
Hills,  having  been  strangled.    Wragg  is  in  custody.' 

"Nothing  but  that;  but,  in  juxtaposition  with  the  absolute 
eulogies  of  Mr.  Adderley  and  Mr.  Roebuck,  how  eloquent. 


i8o  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

how  suggestive  are  those  few  lines!  'Our  old  Anglo-Saxon 
breed,  the  best  in  the  whole  world!' — how  much  that  is 
harsh  and  ill-favored  there  is  in  this  best!  .  .  .  'our  un- 
rivalled happiness;' — what  an  element  of  grimness,  bareness, 
and  hideousness  mixes  with  it  and  blurs  it;  the  workhouse, 
the  dismal  Mapperly  Hills, — how  dismal  those  who  have 
seen  them  will  remember; — ^the  gloom,  the  smoke,  the  cold, 
the  strangled  illegitimate  child!  'I  ask  you  whether  the 
world  over  or  in  past  history  there  is  anything  like  it?'  It 
may  be  so,  one  is  inclined  to  answer;  but  at  any  rate,  in 
that  case,  the  world  is  very  much  to  be  pitied.  And  the 
final  touch, — short,  bleak  and  inhuman :  Wragg  is  in  custody. 
The  sex  lost  in  the  confusion  of  our  unrivalled  happiness ;  or 
shall  I  say,  the  superfluous  Christian  name  lopped  off  by 
the  straightforward  vigor  of  our  old  Anglo-Saxon  breed? 
There  is  profit  for  the  spirit  in  such  contrasts  as  this;  criti- 
cism serves  the  cause  of  perfection  by  establishing  them. 
.  .  .  Mr.  Roebuck  will  have  a  poor  opinion  of  an  adversary 
who  replies  to  his  defiant  songs  of  triumph  only  by  murmur- 
ing under  his  breath,  Wragg  is  in  custody;  but  in  no  other 
way  will  these  songs  of  triumph  be  induced  gradually  to 
moderate  themselves,  to  get  rid  of  what  in  them  is  excessive 
and  offensive,  and  to  fall  into  a  softer  and  truer  key." 

It  is  not  that  Arnold  disapproved  of  enthusiasm,  of 
loyalty  to  country,  of  reasonable  content  with  one's 
surroundings.  It  is  that  he  felt  the  need  of  poise,  of 
clearness  of  vision,  of  "knov^^ledge  and  ever  fresh 
knowledge."  And  insistence  upon  these  things,  the 
furnishing  of  knowledge,  the  diffusion  of  cloud  and 
haze,  the  establishment  of  poise,  was,  he  considered, 
the  high  function  of  criticism,  the  work  of  the  critic. 

And  now  for  some  of  the  principal  ideas  empha- 
sized by  the  critic  Arnold  in  his  attempt  to  improve 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  i8i 

mankind  by  extending  knowledge  and  by  insisting  upon 
reason  and  balance  in  all  things.  Two  terms,  both 
familiar  to-day,  and  one,  at  least,  now  far  from  defi- 
nite in  meaning,  are  frequently  on  Arnold's  lips.  They 
are  "Philistine"  (or  Philistinism)  and  "Culture."  Let 
us  understand  each  term  and  the  relationship  of  culture 
to  Philistinism. 

It  is  well  known  who  were  the  original  Philistines: 
the  enemies  of  the  Children  of  Israel,  the  opponents 
of  the  Lord's  chosen  people.  Goliath,  boasting  of  his 
strength,  flourishing  his  mighty  weapons,  and  defying 
the  Israelites  to  advance,  is  their  chief  prototype.  The 
word  had  been  applied  by  German  students  to  persons 
not  members  of  the  University,  hence  not  members 
of  the  enlightened  class.  Carlyle  had  pitched  upon  the 
word  as  designating  bore  or  dullard  or  provincial. 
But  it  did  not  really  enter  the  vocabulary  of  English 
people  until  Arnold  seized  it  and  dwelt  upon  it  in 
his  essay  on  Heine.    He  says : 

"Philistinism ! — we  have  not  the  expression  in  English. 
Perhaps  we  have  not  the  word  because  we  have  so  much  of 
the  thing.  At  Soli,  I  imagine,  they  did  not  talk  of  solecisms  ; 
and  here,  at  the  very  headquarters  of  Goliath,  nobody  talks 
of  Philistinism.  The  French  have  adopted  the  term  epicier 
(grocer),  to  designate  the  sort  of  being  whom  the  Germans 
designate  by  the  term  Philistine;  but  the  French  term, — be- 
sides that  it  casts  a  slur  upon  a  respectable  class  composed 
of  living  and  susceptible  members,  while  the  original  Philis- 
tines are  dead  and  buried  long  ago, — is  really,  I  think,  in 
itself  much  less  apt  and  expressive  than  the  German  term. 
Efforts  have  been  made  to  obtain  in  English  some  term 
equivalent  to  Philister  or  epicier;  Mr.  Carlyle  has  made  sev- 


i82  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

eral  such  efforts:  'respectability  with  its  thousand  gigs/  he 
says; — ^well,  the  occupant  of  every  one  of  these  gigs  is,  Mr. 
Carlyle  means,  a  Philistine.  However,  the  word  respectable 
is  far  too  valuable  a  word  to  be  thus  perverted  from  its 
proper  meaning;  if  the  English  are  ever  to  have  a  word  for 
the  thing  we  are  speaking  of, — and  so  prodigious  are  the 
changes  which  the  modern  spirit  is  introducing,  that  even 
we  English  shall  perhaps  one  day  come  to  want  such  a  word, 
— I  think  we  had  much  better  take  the  term  Philistine  itself. 
"Philistine  must  have  originally  meant  in  the  mind  of  those 
who  invented  the  nickname,  a  strong,  dogged,  unenlightened 
opponent  of  the  chosen  people,  of  the  children  of  light.  .  .  . 
This  explains  .  .  .  the  detestation  which  Heine  had  for  the 
English:  *I  might  settle  in  England,'  he  says,  in  his  exile, 
*if  it  were  not  that  I  should  find  there  two  things,  coal-smoke 
and  Englishmen;  I  cannot  abide  either.'  What  he  hated  in 
the  English  was  the  'achtbrittische  Beschranktheit,'  as  he 
calls  it, — the  genuine  British  narrowness.  In  truth  the  Eng- 
lish, profoundly  as  they  have  modified  the  old  Middle  Age 
order,  great  as  is  the  liberty  which  they  have  secured  for 
themselves,  have  in  all  their  changes  proceeded,  to  use  a 
familiar  expression,  by  the  rule  of  thumb;  what  was  intol- 
erably inconvenient  to  them  they  have  suppressed,  and  as 
they  have  suppressed  it,  not  because  it  was  irrational,  but 
because  it  was  practically  inconvenient,  they  have  seldom  in 
suppressing  it  appealed  to  reason,  but  always,  if  possible,  to 
some  precedent,  or  form,  or  letter,  which  served  as  a  con- 
venient instrument  for  their  purpose,  and  which  saved  them 
from  the  necessity  of  recurring  to  general  principles.  They 
have  thus  become,  in  a  certain  sense,  of  all  people  the  most 
inaccessible  to  ideas  and  the  most  impatient  of  them;  inac- 
cessible to  them,  because  of  their  want  of  familiarity  with 
them;  and  impatient  of  them  because  they  have  got  on  so 
well  without  them,  that  they  despise  those  who,  not  having 
got  on  as  well  as  themselves,  still  make  a  fuss  for  what 
they  themselves  have  done  so  well  without.     But  there  has 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  183 

certainly  followed  from  hence,  in  this  country,  somewhat  of 
a  general  depression  of  pure  intelligence." 

The  great  virtue  of  the  Elizabethan  age,  the  secret 
of  its  marvelous  progress,  says  Arnold,  was  "its  ac- 
cessibility to  ideas,"  its  lack  of  Philistinism ;  the  great 
defect  of  the  nineteenth  century,  he  says,  the  explana- 
tion of  the  ultimate  failure  of  Wordsworth,  of  Shelley, 
of  Scott,  to  attain  each  his  full  measure  of  greatness, 
was  the  prevalence  of  Philistinism.  The  smug  sat- 
isfaction which  points  with  pride  to  attainments  of  the 
present  and  disregards  its  failures,  which  assumes 
or  approximates  a  self-satisfaction  appropriate  only 
in  the  Celestial  City,  this,  says  Arnold,  is  Philistinism. 

And  how  is  Philistinism  to  be  cured?  How  is 
Goliath  to  be  silenced  and  put  out  of  the  way?  By 
sling  and  pebbles,  by  methodical,  well-poised  Culture. 
The  word  has  tended  to  degenerate.  Let  us  see  how 
Arnold  used  it.  His  most  careful  definition  of  it,  his 
most  extended  application  of  culture  as  a  remedy  is 
contained  in  his  series  of  essays  called  Culture  and 
Anarchy.    Here  he  first  explains  what  culture  is  not : 

"In  one  of  his  speeches  a  short  time  ago,  that  fine  speaker 
and  famous  Liberal,  Mr.  Bright,  took  occasion  to  have  a 
fling  at  the  friends  and  preachers  of  culture.  Teople  who 
talk  about  what  they  call  culture!'  said  he  contemptuously; 
*by  which  they  mean  a  smattering  of  the  two  dead  languages 
of  Greek  and  Latin.'  And  he  went  on  to  remark,  in  a  strain 
with  which  modern  speakers  and  writers  have  made  us  very 
familiar,  how  poor  a  thing  this  culture  is,  how  little  good  it 
can  do  to  the  world,  and  how  absurd  it  is  for  its  possessors 
to  set  much  store  by  it.  .  .  . 


i84  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

"The  culture  which  is  supposed  to  plume  itself  on  a  smat- 
tering of  Greek  and  Latin  is  a  culture  which  is  begotten  by 
nothing  so  intellectual  as  curiosity;  it  is  valued  either  out  of 
sheer  vanity  and  ignorance  or  else  as  an  engine  of  social  and 
class  distinction,  separating  its  holder,  like  a  badge  or  title, 
from  other  people  who  have  not  got  it.  No  serious  man 
would  call  this  culture,  or  attach  any  value  to  it,  as  culture, 
at  all." 

Arnold  later  defines  culture  as  characterized  by  an 
effort  to  see  and  learn  what  reason  and  the  will  of  God 
dictate,  and  the  endeavor  to  make  this  prevail.  With 
greater  concreteness  he  writes : 

"The  whole  scope  of  the  essay  is  to  recommend  culture 
as  the  great  help  out  of  our  present  difficulties,  culture  being 
a  pursuit  of  our  total  perfection  by  means  of  getting  to 
know,  on  all  the  matters  which  most  concern  us,  the  best 
which  has  been  thought  and  said  in  the  world ;  and  through 
this  knowledge,  turning  a  stream  of  fresh  and  free  thought 
upon  our  stock  notions  and  habits,  which  we  now  follow 
staunchly  but  mechanically,  vainly  imagining  that  there  is  a 
virtue  in  following  them  staunchly  which  makes  up  for  the 
mischief  of  following  them  mechanically." 

The  things  which  culture  of  this  sort  aims  to  pro- 
duce and  will  produce  he  finds  expressed  in  a  phrase 
of  Jonathan  Swift's, — "the  two  noblest  of  things, 
sweetness  and  light."  These  things,  by  the  steady 
pursuit  of  true  culture,  by  a  constant  striving  to  learn, 
by  open-mindedness  toward  all  things,  and  by  avoid- 
ance of  bigotry  in  literature,  in  politics,  in  religion, 
mankind  may  procure  for  itself.  Any  other  aim,  the 
pursuit  of  any  other  means,  according  to  Arnold,  leads 
to  Anarchy,  to  despair  and  death. 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  185 

Arnold  saw  at  work  in  modern  times  a  tendency 
which  would  nobly  transform  the  world.  Listen  to 
his  definition  of  this  modern  spirit.  In  it  one  recog- 
nizes the  truth  of  the  definition  and  also  the  extent 
to  which  Arnold^s  theories  encourage  such  a  spirit. 

"Modern  times  find  themselves  with  an  immense  system  of 
institutions,  established  facts,  accredited  dogmas,  customs, 
rules,  which  have  come  to  them  from  times  not  modern. 
In  this  system  their  life  has  to  be  carried  forward;  yet  they 
have  a  sense  that  this  system  is  not  of  their  own  creation, 
that  it  by  no  means  corresponds  exactly  with  the  wants  of 
their  actual  life,  that,  for  them,  it  is  customary,  not  rational. 
The  awakening  of  this  sense  is  the  awakening  of  the  modern 
Spirit." 

Goethe,  Carlyle,  Emerson,  and  Ruskin:  all  were  ex- 
ponents of  this  modern  spirit;  of  them  all  none  saw 
his  object  more  clearly  nor  fought  for  it  more  con- 
sistently than  Arnold. 

ROBERT  LOUIS  STEVENSON  (1850-1894) 
Chronology 

1850  Born,  November  13,  in  Edinburgh,  descendant  of 
lighthouse  engineers.  Mother  delicate,  but  with 
taste  for  letters.  Illness.  Play,  little  schooling; 
private  tutors;  lighthouse  tours. 

1867  Entered  Edinburgh  University.  Idler  and  truant. 
Reading  and  writing. 

1871  Received  a  Society  Medal  for  paper  on  improve- 
ment in  lighthouse  apparatus.  Forsook  engi- 
neering; studied  law. 

1876  Tour  of  Belgium  with  Sir  Walter  Simpson. 

1878  Month  at  Monastier  and  walk  through  mountains 
to  Florae.  Published  An  Inland  Voyage  and 
Travels  With  a  Donkey. 


i86  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

1876  ff.  Essays  in  CornhilL    1877  ff.,  stories. 

1879  Followed   Mrs.   Osbourne   from   France   to   Cali- 

fornia. 

1880  Married  Mrs.  Osbourne.    Illness.    Hard  work.    To 

Scotland.  Virginihus  Puerisque,  collection  of  pe- 
riodical essays.  Treasure  Island,  first  public  suc- 
cess.   Stories,  novels,  plays. 

1887  Memories  and  Portraits.  Went  to  Adirondacks, 
Saranac  Lake. 

1 888- 1 889  Yachting  trip  in  South  Seas.  Purchased 
Vailima,  Samoa. 

1890  Established  household  at  Vailima.  Tusitala.  Hard 
work. 

1892  Across  the  Plains.  Dictation  of  St.  Ives.  Weir  of 
Hermiston. 

1894  Sudden  death,  apoplexy,  December  4.  Burial  on 
Mt.  Vaea. 

Robert  Louis  Stevenson:  delicate  descendant  of 
sturdy,  pious,  Scotch  lighthouse  engineers;  advocate 
by  profession,  but  writer  by  nature  and  by  trade;  to 
whom  the  rigorous  Scotch  climate  was  lovely  but 
fatal,  and  who  spat  blood  far  too  readily  to  be  long 
comfortable  anywhere;  his  own  severest  critic,  pain- 
fully developing,  rewriting,  and  reviewing  all  that  he 
wrote;  poet,  novelist,  short-story  writer,  critic,  essay- 
ist; wanderer  over  the  face  of  the  earth,  struggler 
against  poverty, — yet  our  greatest  modern  apostle  of 
all  noble  childlikeness  and  of  all  manly  whole-souled 
cheerfulness;  buried,  as  he  wished,  on  a  mountain- 
top  in  the  Samoan  wilderness,  with  these  words  (now, 
perhaps,  covered  deep  with  vegetation)  over  his  grave: 

"Glad  did  I  live,  and  gladly  die; 
And  I  laid  me  down  with  a  will." 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  187 

No  romance  produced  by  this  staunch  advocate  of  ro- 
mance exceeds  in  power  the  vivid  realism  of  his  own 
life. 

To  one  who  visits  Edinburgh,  where  Robert  Louis 
Stevenson  was  born  on  November  13,  1850,  it  appears 
that  a  very  slight  inherited  tendency  toward  romance 
would  suffice  in  that  noble  city.  Men  must  have  been 
still  living,  in  Stevenson's  boyhood,  who  had  person- 
ally known  Walter  Scott.  In  one  direction  from  the 
city,  a  short  walk  for  a  boy  and  his  father,  was  the 
seaport  of  Leith,  with  its  fishing-boats,  its  maritime 
population,  and  the  vast  stream  of  the  Forth  River 
ebbing  and  flowing  with  the  North  Sea  tides.  In  other 
directions  were  hills  and  vales  and  lochs  and  burns 
famous  in  Scotch  history — ^Melrose,  Dunfermline,  and 
Stirling.  At  one  end,  the  lower  end,  of  the  great 
ridge  which  divides  the  city  into  two  parts,  to-day 
as  then  one  sees  Holyrood  Palace,  bare,  mediaeval,  and 
forbidding,  its  Gothic  chapel  roofless  and  paved  with 
graves,  Mary  Queen  of  Scots'  great  sin  and  all  the 
suffering  brought  by  it  upon  Scotland  resting  upon 
the  Palace  like  a  deep  shadow  even  in  the  brightest 
sunshine;  on  the  cliff  above  Holyrood  Palace, — the 
bare,  dark,  treeless,  rock  shelved  only  here  and  there 
with  grass, — climbing  past  Jennie  Deans'  cottage  one 
arrives  at  Arthur's  Seat,  glorious  for  outlook  and 
hoary  with  traditions;  then  up  the  street  from  Holy- 
rood  Palace,  along  the  top  of  the  great  ridge,  one 
passes  the  house  of  John  Knox,  the  Scottish  Houses  of 
Parliament  (their  prestige  long  since  transferred  to 


i88  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

London),  the  site  of  the  old  Tolbooth  or  prison  ("the 
heart  of  Midlothian"),  and  the  Church  of  St.  Giles 
where  Jennie  Deans  asserted  the  inviolability  of 
Scotch  Presbyterianism  by  using  the  envoy  of  the  Eng- 
lish Archbishop  as  a  target  and  her  folding-stool  as 
a  missile;  on  up  the  street  one  comes  to  where  the 
ridge  terminates  in  a  mighty  promontory  crowned  by 
a  fortress — the  Castle.  From  all  parts  of  the  city 
its  battlements  are  the  dominant  object,  and  every 
day  at  noon  young  and  old  look  up  to  it  to  catch  sight 
of  the  puff  of  smoke  and  hear  the  belated  roar  by 
which  a  cannon  informs  them  that  it  is  high  noon, 
that  the  King  still  lives,  and  Scotland  still  is  free. 

And  Stevenson  was  not  dependent  for  romantic  nur- 
ture on  these  immediate  surroundings,  all  of  which 
he  loved  and  has  gratefully  celebrated  in  his  works. 
He  made  with  his  father  tours  of  inspection  to  the 
lighthouses  of  northern  Great  Britain — to  Little  Ross 
lighthouse  which  his  father  had  built,  to  the  thirty 
or  more  lighthouses  which  an  uncle  had  built,  and  the 
twenty- four  more  difficult  ones  erected  by  his  grand- 
father— one  of  them  the  Bell  Rock  lighthouse,  where 
in  a  single  year  before  its  erection  seventy  sail  were 
wrecked,  and  where  in  all  the  time  since  its  erec- 
tion not  a  single  wreck  has  occurred. 

Among  the  influences  which  formed  Stevenson  note 
further  a  well-stocked  and  much-read  home  library, 
a  mother  who  had  passed  on  to  Stevenson  not  only  a 
weak  constitution  but  also  a  keen  appreciation  of  lit- 
erature and  an  atmosphere  of  orthodoxy  in  reli- 
gion.   All  these,  and  a  great  deal  more  not  accounted 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  189 

for  by  either  environment  or  heredity,  fairly  sing  to 
you  from  the  pages,  chiefly  and  most  clearly,  perhaps, 
from  the  essays,  written  by  this  zest-giving  man. 

Stevenson  did  not  set  out  to  be  a  writer.  The  only 
son  of  so  brilliant  a  house  of  engineers  had  to  attempt 
the  engineering  profession  first.  After  graduating 
from  Edinburgh  University,  he  did  attempt  it.  He 
even  won  a  Medal  from  the  Edinburgh  Society  of  Arts 
for  a  masterful  paper  on  the  improvement  of  light- 
house apparatus.  The  outdoor  activities  of  the  pro- 
fession pleased  him.  But  the  indoor  ones,  the  draft- 
ing and  the  reckoning,  almost  killed  him — he  was  al- 
ready pretty  much  what  he  later  called  himself,  a 
"complication  of  cough  and  bones."  And  he  knew 
where  his  nature  would  find  the  expression  it  craved. 
It  was  not  in  engineering. 

As  a  schoolboy  it  was  his  custom,  so  he  tells  us, 
to  carry  everywhere  two  books — one  to  read,  one  to 
write  in.  Hazlitt,  Lamb,  Wordsworth,  Defoe,  Haw- 
thorne, Montaigne,  even  German  writers,  he  would 
in  turn  read  and  imitate ;  in  his  modest  way,  he  called 
it  "playing  the  sedulous  ape."  That  for  him,  the  suc- 
cessful imitation,  the  striving,  the  expression  of  him- 
self, that  was  fun,  it  was  living. 

But  there  was  no  recognized  profession  of  letters. 
It  seemed  to  his  earnest  Scotch  parents  as  a  profes- 
sion of  canoeing  or  trout-fishing,  or  sunset-gazing 
might  seem  to  us.  It  was  determined  that  he  should 
study  law.  And  in  1875  ^^  was  admitted  to  the  bar. 
He  must  have  been  an  odd  sight  among  the  black- 
gowned  advocates  waiting  for  clients  at  the  Edin- 


190  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

burgh  courts,  this  gaunt,  stCM3ping,  great-eyed  fellow, 
his  gown  flecked  with  cigarette  ashes,  and  his  face 
reflecting  his  desire  to  be  off  and  away  from  it  all. 

In  1876  he  did  get  away  to  make  a  canoeing  tour 
of  Belgium  and  France  with  Sir  Walter  Simpson ;  and 
if  you  want  an  experience  better  than  taking  the  trip 
yourself,  read  his  An  Inland  Voyage.  Two  years 
later  he  made  a  tour  through  the  mountains  of  Brit- 
tany, alone  except  for  the  jackass,  Modest ine,  who 
carried  his  pack;  you  may  enjoy  this  adulterated  soli- 
tude of  Stevenson's  in  his  Travels  with  a  Donkey. 

These  are  the  beginning.  They  really  consist  of 
essays.  And  in  Virginihus  Puerisque,  Familiar  Stud- 
ies of  Men  and  Books,  and  Memories  and  Portraits 
you  may  read  other  products  of  this  period  which 
first  appeared  in  the  Cornhill  Magazine  and  elsewhere. 

Some  stories  followed,  also  a  play  (Deacon  Brodie, 
in  collaboration  with  the  poet  and  editor,  W.  E.  Hen- 
ley) ;  for  Stevenson,  as  you  see  in  A  Penny  Plain  and 
Twopence  Colored,  was  subject  to  the  glamor  of  the 
theater.  At  the  same  time  he  was  writing  Lay  Morals, 
a  treatise  on  ethics;  for  he  had  an  intensely  serious 
side.  As  yet  he  had  not  caught  the  public.  He  was 
at  this  time  experiencing  the  pinch  of  poverty,  as  well 
as  the  sufferings  of  invalidism  and  of  mere  author- 
ship. 

And  his  testing  time  was  not  ended.  He  fell  in 
love.  The  lady  was  already  married — not  in  the  way 
that  is  ratified  in  heaven,  so  the  sequel  clearly  shows, 
but  nevertheless  married.  She  returned  from  France, 
where  Stevenson  had  met  her,  to  California  to  secure 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  igi 

a  divorce.  Stevenson  followed  her.  Naturally  his 
strict  parents  did  not  heartily  approve.  It  was  no 
errand  to  be  financed  by  Scotch  Presbyterians.  Steven- 
son consequently  shipped  to  New  York  in  the  steerage, 
and  crossed  the  United  States  in  an  emigrant  train — 
one  tin  basin  for  the  ablutions  of  four,  squalling  child 
in  the  next  seat,  cursing  trainmen  to  herd  you  like 
sheep !  He  endured  it  all,  and  gave  us  later  his  cheer- 
ful Amateur  Emigrants  and  Across  the  Plains. 

The  effect  of  his  hardships  was  almost  fatal.  On 
April  1 6,  1880,  he  wrote  from  San  Francisco  to  his 
friend,  Mr.  Edmund  Gosse: 

"You  have  not  answered  my  last;  and  I  know  you  will 
repent  when  you  hear  how  near  I  have  been  to  another 
world.  For  about  six  weeks  I  have  been  in  utter  doubt; 
it  was  a  toss-up  for  life  or  death  all  that  time;  but  I  won 
the  toss,  sir,  and  Hades  went  off  once  more  discomfited. 
This  is  not  the  first  time,  nor  will  it  be  the  last,  that  I  have 
a  friendly  game  with  that  gentleman.  I  know  he  will  end 
by  cleaning  me  out;  but  the  rogue  is  insidious,  and  the  habit 
of  that  sort  of  gambling  seems  to  be  a  part  of  my  nature; 
it  was,  I  suspect,  too  much  indulged  in  youth;  break  your 
children  of  this  tendency,  my  dear  Gosse,  from  the  first.  It 
is,  when  once  formed,  a  habit  more  fatal  than  opium — I 
speak,  as  St.  Paul  says,  like  a  fool.  I  have  been  very  sick; 
on  the  verge  of  a  galloping  consumption,  cold  sweats,  pros- 
trating attacks  of  cough,  sinking  fits  in  which  I  lost  the 
power  of  speech,  fever,  and  all  the  ugliest  circumstances 
of  the  disease ;  and  I  have  cause  to  bless  God,  my  wife  that  is 
to  be,  and  one  Dr.  Bamford  (a  name  the  Muse  repels), 
that  I  have  come  out  of  all  this,  and  got  my  feet  once  more 
upon  a  little  hilltop,  with  a  fair  prospect  of  life  and  some 
new  desire  of  living.     Yet  I  did  not  wish  to  die,  neither; 


192  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

only  I  felt  unable  to  go  on  farther  with  that  rough  horse- 
play of  human  life:  a  man  must  be  pretty  well  to  take  the 
business  in  good  part.  Yet  I  felt  all  the  time  that  I  had 
done  nothing  to  entitle  me  to  an  honorable  discharge;  that 
I  had  taken  up  many  obligations  and  begun  many  friendships 
which  I  had  no  right  to  put  away  from  me ;  and  that  for  me 
to  die  was  to  play  the  cur  and  slinking  sybarite,  and  desert 
the  colors  on  the  eve  of  the  decisive  fight." 

For  seven  years,  with  only  brief  periods  of  com- 
parative health,  he  continued  (what  we  call)  ..n  in- 
valid, seeking  relief  now  in  Scotland  at  a  home  given 
him  by  his  reconciled  father,  now  in  Switzerland,  at 
length  in  the  Adirondack  Mountains,  New  York.  Yet 
at  frequent  intervals  he  produced  the  stories,  the 
verses,  the  essays  which  we  cherish,  writings  reflect- 
ing only  the  bravest  and  staunchest  of  spirits.  Vir- 
ginihus  Puerisque,  a  series  of  essays,  appeared  in  1880. 
Treasure  Island,  1883,  was  the  first  to  "catch"  the  pub- 
lic. His  best  stories — The  Merry  Men,  Markheim, 
Doctor  Jekyll  and  Mr.  Hyde,  and  others — were  fol- 
lowed, in  1887,  by  another  series  of  essays — Memories 
and  Portraits.  With  his  novel  Kidnapped,  1886,  his 
position  as  a  writer  became  established,  his  income 
consequently  at  last  assured. 

A  yachting  excursion  to  the  South  Seas  in  1888- 
1889,  a  visit  to  Honolulu,  the  purchase  of  an  estate 
in  Samoa,  and  his  settlement  there  in  1890  followed. 
Vailima  (five  rivers),  the  name  given  to  his  estate, 
and  Tusitala  (teller  of  tales),  the  name  given  him  by 
the  natives,  thus  became  associated  with  this  frail  but 
indomitable  author. 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  ESSAYISTS  I93 

In  1884,  he  had  written  to  his  friend,  the  poet 
Henley : 

"This  pleasant  middle  age  into  whose  port  we  are  steering 
is  quite  to  my  fancy.  I  would  cast  anchor  here,  and  go 
ashore  for  twenty  years,  and  see  the  manners  of  the  place. 
Youth  was  a  great  time,  but  somewhat  fussy.  Now  in  mid- 
dle age  (bar  lucre)  all  seems  mighty  placid.  It  likes  me;  I 
spy  a  little  bright  cafe  in  one  corner  of  the  port,  in  front  of 
which  I  now  propose  we  should  sit  down.  There  is  just 
enough  of  the  bustle  of  the  harbor  and  no  more;  and  the 
ships  are  close  in,  regarding  us  with  stern  windows — the  ships 
that  bring  deals  from  Norway  and  parrots  from  the  Indies. 
Let  us  sit  down  here  for  twenty  years,  with  a  packet  of  to- 
bacco and  a  drink,  and  talk  of  art  and  women.  By  and  by, 
the  whole  city  will  sink,  and  the  ships  too,  and  the  table,  and 
we  also;  but  we  shall  have  sat  for  twenty  years,  and  had  a 
fine  talk;  and  by  that  time,  who  knows?  exhausted  the  sub- 
ject." 

Just  one-half  of  the  period  he  requested  was  allowed 
him.  His  sitting  was  often  among  bed-pillows;  all 
writing  was  at  length  prevented  by  an  attack  of 
scrivener's  cramp;  and  even  talking,  in  the  ordinary 
sense,  was  occasionally  prevented:  St.  Ives  (posthu- 
mous) was  dictated  to  his  amanuensis  in  deaf  and 
dumb  language  while  he  was  too  ill  to  speak.  Yet 
there  is  no  sign  of  his  having  begun  to  "exhaust  the 
subject."  Weir  of  Hermiston,  upon  which  he  was 
working  at  the  last,  is  recognized  as,  so  far  as  it 
goes,  the  greatest  of  his  novels. 

The  rupture  of  a  blood-vessel  in  his  brain  brought 
about  his  sudden  death  on  December  4,  1894.  Sixty 
natives  cleared  a  path  sufficient  for  them  to  carry  his 


194  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

body  to  the  place  he  had  designated,  a  forest-covered 
peak  of  Mt.  Vaea.  There  on  his  tomb  appears  the 
Requiem  he  had  composed: 

"Under  the  wide  and  starry  sky, 
Dig  the  grave  and  let  me  lie. 
Glad  did  I  live  and  gladly  die. 
And  I  laid  me  down  with  a  will. 

"This  be  the  verse  you  grave  for  me: 
Here  he  lies  where  he  longed  to  be: 
Home  is  the  sailor,  home  from  the  sea. 
And  the  hunter  home  from  the  hill." 

The  roll  of  the  last  three  centuries  exhibits  no  name 
more  inspiring  than  Stevenson's.  The  twentieth  cen- 
tury possesses  few  heritages  more  valuable  than  the 
record  and  the  works  of  this  poet,  fiction- writer, 
essayist. 


APPENDIX  I 

Kinds  of  Essays 

No  rigid  or  elaborate  classification  of  Essays  seems 
practicable.  The  terms  "subjective"  and  "objective," 
however,  are  suggestive,  and  in  the  main  exclusive 
(cf.  pp.  IIO-II2  above).  The  further  subdivisions, 
also  the  relation  of  essays  to  other  types  of  literature, 
indicated  in  the  table  on  page  197,  have  proved  useful. 


196 


APPENDIX  197 

AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

LYRIC   POETRY 

ESSAYS 

Chiefly  Subjective  Chiefly  Objective 

1.  Exhibiting  mere  exuber- 
ance of  thought  and 
spirit. 

2.  Exhibiting     deliber- 
ate effort  to  entertain 
bj  displaying  self. 

3.  Involving   treatment 
of    some    subject    with 
simply      "personal 
touches." 

4.  Concerned  primarily 
with   a    (recent)    book, 
a  recent  occurrence,  or 
a  prevailing  conception. 

5.   Constituting   an   in- 
dependent expression  of 
the      author's      serious 
"message." 

HISTORY,  PHI- 
LOSOPHY (extended, 
comprehensive,  existing 
solely  for  sake  of  topic 
treated), 
FICTION. 


•     APPENDIX  II 

Minor  English  Essayists 
Below  will  be  found  brief  characterizations  of  the 
English  essayists  who  are  not  treated  in  the  preceding 
pages,  yet  whose  essay-writings  are  frequently  met 
with.  In  each  of  the  four  groups,  which  are  arranged 
chronologically  by  centuries,  the  individuals  are  ar- 
ranged alphabetically. 

Seventeenth  Century 

Browne,  Sir  Thomas  (1605- 1682),  physician  and 
scholar;  essay-like  passages  occur  in  his  Religio 
Medici,  1643,  ^^^  Burial,  1658,  and  Vulgar  Errors 
(  Pseud  0  doxia  Epidemic  a  ) ,  1 646. 

Defoe,  Daniel  (i66i?-i73i),  author  of  Robinson 
Crusoe,  journalist  and  novelist;  in  his  Review,  1704- 
17 1 3,  and  elsewhere  published  many  virtual  essays. 
\/  Dryden,  John  (1631-1700),  poet  and  dramatist; 
his  many  prose  prefaces  and  introductions,  chiefly 
critical  and  often  bitterly  controversial,  are  sometimes 
called  essays. 

Earle,  John  (i6oi?-i665).  Bishop  of  Salisbury, 
poet  and  divine,  wrote  Micromosgraphie,  or  a  Piece  of 
the  World  Discovered  in  Essayes  and  Characters, 
1628. 

Felltham,  Owen  (i6o2?-i668),  v^voi^  Resolves, 
Divine,  Morall,  Politicall,  1620,  a  series  of  moral  es- 

198 


APPENDIX  199 

says  bearing  some  resemblance  to  Bacon's  Essays, 
which  were  frequently  enlarged  and  reissued. 

FoRDE,  Thomas  (fl.  1660),  in  The  Times  Anat- 
omized in  Several  Characters,  1647,  reflects  influence 
of  Montaigne. 

Fuller,  Thomas  (1608-1661),  divine  and  histo- 
rian; his  Good  Thoughts  in  Bad  Times,  1645,  ^.nd  His- 
tory of  the  Worthies  in  England,  1662,  contain  sec- 
tions resembling  essays. 

Hyde,  Edward  (1609-1674),  Earl  of  Clarendon, 
historian  of  the  Rebellion  or  Civil  War,  1702- 1704, 
wrote  also  Reflections  upon  Several  Christian  Duties, 
Divine  and  Moral,  by  Way  of  Essays,  1727. 

Osborne,  Francis  (1593-1659),  in  his  Advice  to  a 
Son  and  Miscellany  of  Sundry  Essays,  Paradoxes, 
Etc.,  dimly  deflects  Bacon. 

OvERBURY,  Sir  Thomas  (1581-1613),  poet  and 
courtier ;  prose  Characters  were  appended  to  his  poem, 
The  Wife,  1614. 

Swift,  Jonathan  (1667-1745),  pamphleteer  and 
satirist,  contributed  to  The  Tatler,  The  Examiner,  and 
other  periodicals,  and  wrote  various  satirical  and  con- 
troversial pamphlets  more  or  less  like  essays. 

Temple,  Sir  William  (1628-1699),  diplomatist, 
gardener,  and  author;  published  extended  and  rather 
pedantic  Essays,  1680,  1692. 


Eighteenth  Century 

Budgell,  Eustace  (1686-1737),  a  cousin  of  Jo- 
seph Addison,  and  a  contributor  to  The  Spectator, 


200  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

Chesterfield  (Philip  Dormer),  Lord  (1694- 
1773),  author  of  Letters  to  His  Son,  contributed  es- 
says to  periodicals. 

CoBBETT,  William  (1762-1835),  politician  and 
agriculturist;  published  periodicals  in  both  the  United 
States  and  England.  His  Rural  Rides,  1830,  reports 
a  series  of  political  tours  through  England. 

Cowper,  William  (1731-1800),  poet  and  trans- 
lator; contributed  a  few  essays  to  The  Connoisseur, 
1756,  and  other  periodicals. 

Fielding,  Henry  (1707-1754),  novelist;  wrote 
imitations  of  The  Spectator  for  The  Champion,  1741, 
and  other  periodicals. 

Franklin,  Benjamin  (1706-1790),  diplomat  and 
scientist;  published  imitations  of  Spectator  papers  in 
The  New  England  Courant,  in  The  Pennsylvania  Ga- 
zette, iy2g  ff.,  and  in  Poor  Richard's  Almanac,  1732  ff. 

Gibbon,  Edward  (1737- 1794),  historian;  wrote 
miscellaneous  essays  (published,  1796). 

Hume,  David  (1711-1776),  philosopher  and  histo- 
rian; author  of  various  essays,  chiefly  philosophical, 
1741  ff. 

"Junius,"  signature  attached  to  a  series  of  seventy 
Letters,  1769- 1772,  in  the  London  Public  Advertiser, 
dealing  boldly  with  current  political  conditions.  The 
identity  of  Junius  has  never  been  established. 

Montagu,  Lady  Mary  Wortley  (1689- 1762),  in 
her  various  Letters  included  passages  sometimes 
classed  as  essays. 

Paine,  Thomas  (1737-1809),  radicalist  and  pamph- 
leteer. 


APPENDIX  20I 

Reynolds,  Sir  Joshua  (1723- 1792),  painter,  is  re- 
membered among  essayists  for  his  Discourses  on  Art. 

Richardson,  Samuel  (1689-1761),  novelist,  con- 
tributed to  The  Rambler. 

Smith,,  Adam  (1723- 1790),  political  economist, 
preceded  and  followed  his  Wealth  of  Nations ,  1776, 
with  learned  essays  on  various  subjects. 

Sterne,  Laurence  (171 3- 1768),  novelist. 

Walpole,  Horace  (171 7- 1797),  wit  and  letter- 
writer,  contributed  papers  to  The  World,  1753. 

Warton,  Joseph  (1722-1800),  critic,  contributed 
literary  criticisms  to  The  Adventurer,  1753. 

Nineteenth  Century 

Alcott,  Amos  Bronson  (1799- 1888),  American, 
friend  of  Emerson;  contributed  to  The  Dial  (see  p. 
135  above). 

Bagehot,  Walter  (1826-1877),  political  econo- 
mist, literary  critic. 

Besant,  Sir  Walter  (1838-1901),  novelist  and 
critic. 

Brougham,  Lord  Henry  (1778-1868),  a  founder 
of  the  Edinburgh  Review  (see  p.  11 1  above),  and  one 
of  its  early  contributors. 

Brown,  Dr.  John  (1810-1882),  Scotch  surgeon 
and  essayist;  author  of  Rab  and  His  Friends,  1859. 

Coleridge,  Hartley  (1796- 1849),  po^t  (son  of 
Samuel  Taylor  Coleridge),  and  contributor  to  Black- 
wood's. 

Coleridge,  Mary  Elizabeth  (i  861 -1907),  poet, 
novelist,  and  essayist. 


202  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

Curtis,  George  William  (1824- 1892),  American 
journalist  and  publicist;  author  of  Prue  and  I,  1856, 
Potiphar  Papers,  1856,  etc. 

"Eliot,  George"  (Mary  Ann  Evans  Cross), 
(1819-1880),  novelist,  author  of  miscellaneous  essays, 
chiefly  of  a  series  entitled  The  Impressions  of  The- 
ophrastus  Such,  1879. 

Fuller,  (Sarah)  Margaret  (1810-1850),  Ameri- 
can writer,  first  editor  (1839-1842)  of  The  Dial  (see 
p.  135  above). 

Gladstone,  William  Ewart  (1809- 1898),  states- 
man, orator,  and  critic ;  author  of  essays  dealing  with 
religious  and  classical  subjects. 
f\.^^  Greeley,  Horace  (1811-1872),  American  journal- 
ist, author  of  various  essays,  mostly  editorials,  of  great 
contemporary  significance. 

Hawthorne,  Nathaniel  (1804-1864),  American 
novelist  and  short-story  writer;  included  many  essays 
in  Mosses  from  an  Old  Manse,  1846,  Our  Old  Home, 
1863,  etc. 

HiGGiNsoN,  Thomas  Wentworth  (1823-1911), 
American  man  of  letters;  author  of  Atlantic  Essays, 
1 87 1,  Cheerful  Yesterdays,  1898,  etc. 

Holland,  Dr.  Josiah  Gilbert  (181 9-1 881), 
American  editor  and  poet;  wrote  Timothy  Titcomh's 
Letters,  1858,  etc. 

Holmes,  Oliver  Wendell  (1809-1894),  American 
physician  and  poet;  author  of  The  Autocrat  of  the 
Breakfast  Table,  1857-1858,  The  Poet  at  the  Break- 
fast Table,  1872,  etc. 

Huxley,  Thomas  Henry  (1825-1895),  scientist, 


APPENDIX  203 

writer,  and  lecturer  on  topics  of  scientific  significance. 

Jefferies,  Richard  (1848-1887),  author  of  vari- 
ous sketches  of  English  rural  life. 

Jeffrey,  Lord  Francis  (1773-1850),  judge  and 
literary  critic;  founder  (together  with  certain  others, 
see  p.  Ill  above)  of  Edinburgh  Review;  to  it  he  con- 
tributed about  two  hundred  articles. 

Landor,  Walter  Savage  (1775- 1864),  adventurer 
and  man  of  letters;  Imaginary  Conversations,  1831, 
and  numerous  pro-Latin  essays. 

Lanier,  Sidney  (1842-1881),  American  poet  and 
lecturer;  author  of  Science  of  English  Verse,  1880. 

Lockhart,  John  Gibson  (1794-1854),  biographer 
of  Sir  Walter  Scott,  and  contributor  to  the  great  Eng- 
lish Reviews. 

Lowell,  James  Russell  (181 9-1 891),  American 
poet,  critic,  and  essayist. 

M'Carthy,  Justin  (1830-1912),  Irish  journalist 
and  novelist. 

Martineau,  Harriet  (1802- 1876),  author  of  seri- 
ous essays  on  miscellaneous  topics. 

Mitford,  Mary  Russell  (1787-1855),  novelist  and 
dramatist,  author  of  neighborhood  sketches  entitled 
Our  Village,  1824. 

More,  Hannah  (1745- 1833),  dramatist  and  novel- 
ist; wrote  also  a  few  essays. 

Norton,  Charles  Eliot  (1827- 1908),  American 
scholar,  editor,  translator,  and  essayist;  friend  of 
Ruskin. 

Pater,  Walter  (Horatio)  (1839- 1894),  subtle 
critic  and  stylist;  essays  on  classical  subjects. 


204  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

Paulding,  James  Kirke  (1779-1860),  American 
novelist  and  essayist ;  friend  of  Washington  Irving. 

PoE,  Edgar  Allan   (1809- 1849),  American  poet 
and  critic. 

Smiles,  Samuel  (1812-1904),  biographer,  author 
of  Self-Helpj  1859,  and  of  similar  books. 

Smith,  Sydney  (i  771 -1845),  one  of  the  founders 
of  the  Edinburgh  Review  (see  p.  iii  above). 

SouTHEY,  Robert  (1774- 1843),  poet-laureate,  bi- 
ographer, essayist,  contributor  to  literary  periodicals. 

Spencer,     Herbert     (1820-1903),     philosopher, 
author  of  Education,  1861,  and  other  serious  essays. 

Swinburne,    Algernon    Charles    (1837-1909), 
poet  and  critical  essayist. 
^\       Symonds,  John  Addington  (1840-1893),  writer 
^of  critical  essays,   many  of  them  dealing  with  the 
Renaissance. 

Thompson,  Francis  (1859-1907),  poet  and  critic, 
contributor  to  literary  critical  periodicals. 
4   Thoreau,  Henry  David  (18 17-1862),  American 
naturalist  and   radicalist;  author  of   Walden  Pond, 
1854,  and  other  series  of  essays. 

Warner,  Charles  Dudley  (1829-1900),  Ameri- 
can writer  of  humorous  essays. 

Whipple,  Edwin  Percy  (i 819- 1886),  American 
writer  and  lecturer. 

Willis,  Nathaniel  Parker  (1806-1867),  Ameri- 
can journalist  and  poet. 

Wilson,  John  ("Christopher,  or  Kit,  North") 
( 1 785-1854),'' noted  Scotch  contributor  to  Black- 
wood's.   Noctes  Ambrosianae,  1822-1835. 


APPENDIX  III 
Contemporary  Essayists 

Benson,  Arthur  Christopher  (1862-  ),  es- 
sayist and  poet;  author  of  The  House  of  Quiet,  1901, 
Beside  Still  Waters,  1907,  etc. 

BiRRELL,  Augustine  (1850-  ),  long  Chief  Sec- 
retary for  Ireland,  essayist,  and  lecturer  on  literary 
topics. 

Briggs,  LeBaron  Russell  (1855-  ),  Dean  of 
the  Faculty  of  Arts  and  Sciences  and  Professor  in 
Harvard  University;  author  of  School,  College,  and 
Character,  1901,  and  other  volumes  of  essays. 

Bryce,  James  ( 1838-         ),  historian  and  diplomat. 

Burroughs,  John  (1837-  ),  American  natural- 
ist and  essayist. 

Chesterton,  Gilbert  Keith  (1874-  ),  jour- 
nalist. 

Crothers,  Samuel  McChord  (1857-  )>  Amer- 
ican Unitarian  minister ;  author  of  The  Gentle  Reader, 
1903,  The  Pardoner's  Wallet,  1905,  etc. 

DoBSON,  (Henry)  Austin  (1840-  ),  poet  and 
essayist. 

DowDEN,  Edward  (1843-  )>  Professor  of  Eng- 
lish Literature  in  Dublin  University,  Shakespearean 
scholar,  critical  essayist. 

205 


206  ENGLISH  ESSAYISTS 

GossE,  Edmund  (William)  (1849-  )>  o^  Trin- 
ity College,  Cambridge;  critical  essayist  and  poet. 

Harrison,  Frederic  ( 1831-         ),  scholar  and  pub- 
licist; critic  of  nineteenth  century  authors. 
\    HowELLS,  William  Dean  (1837-         ),  American 
Novelist,  essayist,  and  critic ;  contributes  Editor's  Easy 
Chair  papers  to  Harper's  Magazine. 

Lucas,  Edward  Verrall  (1868-  ),  author  of 
Over  Bemerton's,  etc. 

Lynn,  Margaret  (1869-  ),  Professor  of  Eng- 
lish in  the  University  of  Kansas;  contributor  to  At- 
lantic Monthly. 

Mabie,  Hamilton  Wright  (1846-  ),  Ameri- 
can journalist  and  critic. 

Matthews,  (James)  Brander  (1852-  ),  Pro- 
fessor of  Dramatic  Literature  in  Columbia  University, 
contributor  to  current  periodicals. 

MoRLEY,  John,  Lord  (1838-  ),  statesman,  bi- 
ographer, and  literary  critic. 

Perry,  Bliss  (i860-  ),  Professor  of  English 
Literature  in  Harvard  University;  former  editor  of 
Atlantic  Monthly;  author  of  Park  Street  Papers,  Car- 
\  lyle:  How  to  Know  Him,  etc. 
\  Repplier,  Agnes  (1858-  ),  American  writer  of 
essays  dealing  with  topics  of  current  interest. 

Saintsbury,  George  (Edward  Bateman)  (1845- 
\         ),  Professor  of  English  in  University  of  Edin- 
burgh, author  of  numerous  critical  essays. 

Wendell,  Barrett  (1855-  ),  Professor  of 
English  in  Harvard  University,  writer  on  literary,  na- 
tional, and  international  topics. 


I 


APPENDIX  207 

Winter,  William  (1836-  ),  American  dra- 
matic critic. 

WooDBERRY,  George  Edward  (1855-  ),  Ameri- 
can poet  and  critic;  Professor  of  Poetry  in  Columbia 
University. 

Yeats,  William  Butler  (1865-  )>  Irish  poet, 
dramatist,  and  literary  critic. 


INDEX 


(For  essayists  not  discussed  in  the  text,  see  Ap- 
pendix II  and  Appendix  III.) 


Abou  Ben  Adhem,  y2. 
Addison,    Joseph,    12-25; 

education,  15;  The  Cam- 
paign, 15;  contributes  to 
The  Tatler,  15;  contri- 
butions to  The  Specta- 
tor, 16;  quarrel  with 
Pope,  16;  quarrel  with 
Steele,  16;  supplemented 
by  Dr.  Johnson,  2y\ 
quoted,  85. 

America,  Hazlitt  in,  49; 
ignorance  concerning, 
58;  visits  of  Thackeray 
to,  159;  visit  of  Arnold 
to,  173- 

American  Scholar,  The, 
149. 

Apologia  pro  vita  sua,  132. 

Arnold,  Matthew,  172-185; 
education,  173;  industry, 
173;  Professor  of  Poet- 
ry, 173 ;  critical  writings, 
173;  visit  to  America, 
173;  sudden  death,  173; 
characterization,  174;  a 
professional  critic,  174; 
his  criticism  of  Emerson, 
175 ;  his  purpose  in  criti- 
cism,   178;   Philistinism, 


181;  "culture,"  184;  his 
definition  of  the  "mod- 
ern spirit,"  185. 

Arnold,  Dr.  Thomas,  172. 

Arts  and  Crafts,  163. 

Autobiography  of  Leigh 
Hunt,  74,  77,  81. 

Bacon,    Sir  Francis,   4-9; 

his  Essays,  5-6,  8-9;  his 
relation  to  Montaigne, 
5-6;  as  a  statesman,  7; 
as  philosopher  and  scien- 
tist, 8;  as  historian,  8; 
emulated  by  Emerson, 
135-136. 

Bagehot,  Walter,  46. 

Beggar's  Opera,  The,  22 
(note),  29. 

Bennett,  Mr.  Arnold,  58. 

Bergson,  M.,  140. 

Bickerstaff,  Isaac,  17. 

Birrell,  Mr.  Augustine 
(quoted),  44. 

Bleak  House,  78. 

Blumine,  99. 

Book  review  type  of  es- 
says, iio-iii;  also  Ap- 
pendix I. 

Bracebridge  Hall,  68,  100. 


209 


210 


INDEX 


Brantwood,  171. 

Bronte,  Charlotte,  154,  155. 

Brougham,  Lord,  1 1 1 ;  also 

Appendix  II. 
Brown,  Charles  Brockden, 

59. 

Bulwer-Lytton,  Sir  Ed- 
ward, 156. 

Burns,  Robert,  48. 

Byron,  Lord,  yy. 

C  a  r  1  y  1  e  ,  Mrs.  (Jane 
Welsh),  102,  105. 

Carlyle,  Thonias,  95-125; 
his  opinion  of  Lamb,  42 ; 
his  description  of  Lamb, 
44;  and  Lamb,  45;  and 
Hazlitt,  46 ;  his  character- 
ization of  Hunt,  72;  his 
description  of  DeQuin- 
cey,  86;  actual  condition 
of  England  not  reflected 
in  works  of  other  writ- 
ers, 95 ;  the  real  condi- 
tion, 96;  earnestness  of 
Carlyle,  97 ;  influence 
upon  John  Ruskin,  97; 
testimony  of  Emerson, 
97;  parentage  and  edu- 
cation, 98;  suffering  and 
uncertainty  in  youth,  99 ; 
"conversion,"  100 ;  de- 
termination to  write, 
1 01 ;  tutoring  and  travel- 
ing, 102;  met  Lamb  and 
others,  102;  his  opinion 
of  them,  102;  transla- 
tions, 102 ;  recognition 
from  Goethe,  102;  mar- 
ried Jane  Welsh,  102 ;  at 


Craigenputtock,  103 ;  pe- 
riodical essays,  103 ; 
method  of  writing,  103; 
Sartor  Resartus  pub- 
lished, 103 ;  reception, 
104;  removal  to  Chelsea, 
104 ;  other  writings,  104 ; 
On  Heroes,  etc.,  104; 
influence — C  r  o  m  w  e  1 1, 
105 ;  Rector  of  Edin- 
burgh University,  105 ; 
death  of  Mrs.  Carlyle, 
106;  his  Reminiscences, 
106 ;  head  of  English  let- 
ters, 106;  failing  powers, 
106;  friends,  106;  burial 
at  Ecclefechan,  106;  na- 
ture of  his  message,  107- 
1 10 ;  the  Real  beyond  the 
Apparent,  108 ;  Hero- 
worship,  108;  literature, 
108;  changed  our  con- 
ceptions of  Mahomet 
and  of  Cromwell,  109; 
discredited  various  re- 
forms, 109;  summary, 
109 ;  and  Montaigne, 
no;  and  Macaulay,  on 
History,  120;  and  New- 
man, 125-126;  and  Em- 
erson, 136,  145,  148,  150; 
and  Thackeray,  154;  and 
Ruskin,  162,  169,  171 ; 
and  Arnold,  174,  175, 
179,  185 ;  and  Philistin- 
ism, 181. 

Citizen  of  the  World 
(Chinese  Letters),  32, 
33. 

Coleridge,  37,  41,  50. 


INDEX 


211 


Contemporary  Essayists, 
see  Appendix  III. 

Cornhill  Magazine,  117, 
160,  169,  190. 

Cowley,  Abraham,  9-1 1; 
nature  of  his  essays,  9, 
10,  II;  education,  etc., 
10 ;  retirement,  1 1 ;  posi- 
tion, II. 

Cynic,  Thackeray  as  a,  152- 
157. 

Defoe,  Daniel,  17,  89;  also 

Appendix  II. 
DeQuincey,  Thomas,  84- 

94; 

autobiographical  nature 
of  his  work,  86;  Car- 
lyle's  description  of,  86; 
early  life,  86-87;  opium 
taking,  87 ;  eccentricities, 
87 ;  why  remembered, 
88-94;  not  for  message, 
88 ;  not  for  style,  89 ;  not 
for  humor,  89-90;  a  lit- 
erary artisan,  90;  super- 
lative human  attributes, 
91-94;  vast  knowledge, 
91 ;  marvelous  memory, 
91 ;  richness  of  (psycho- 
logical) associations,  92; 
facility  of  expression, 
93 ;  his  impassioned 
prose,  94;  contrast  to 
Carlyle,  95,  100;  and 
Ruskin,  168. 
Deserted  Village,  The,  31, 

58. 
Dickens,   Charles,    58,   69, 
78,  156,  159,  165. 


Disraeli,    Benjamin,     106, 

156- 

Divinity  School  (Har- 
vard) Address,  Emer- 
son's,  149. 

Dryden,  John,  11,  48;  also 
Appendix  II. 

Edinburgh,  187. 

Edinburgh  Review,  102, 
III,  119,  146. 

Edwards,  Jonathan,  150. 

Eighteenth  Century  Essay- 
ists of  minor  importance 
as    such,    see    Appendix 

Elective  system,  138. 
Elegy  Written  in  a  Country 

Churchyard,  29. 
Emerson,    Ralph    Waldo, 

135-150; 

on  Montaigne,  2,  3;  ap- 
proved of  Sartor,  104; 
opinion  of  Frederick  the 
Great,  105 ;  friend  of 
Carlyle,  106;  characteri- 
zation of  Macaulay,  121 ; 
desire  to  write  a  Sequel 
to  Bacon,  136;  as  a 
preacher  in  the  ''church 
of  letters,"  137;  influence 
upon  education,  138;  dit- 
to upon  scholarship,  139; 
''Hitch  your  wagon  to  a 
star !"  141 ;  Lowell's 
characterization  of,  142; 
parentage  and  education, 
142-143;  his  Journal, 
143;  as  a  minister,  144; 
reasons  for  leaving  min- 


212 


INDEX 


istry,  143-144 ;  visit  to  Eu- 
rope, 147 ;  lecturing  and 
writing,  148;  and  Car- 
lyle,  150;  popularity  at 
last,  150;  his  death,  150; 
his  position,  150;  and 
Ruskin,  172;  Arnold's 
criticism  of,  175-177. 

Epistles   of    Seneca,    i,    5 
(note). 

Esmond,   Henry,   portray- 
al of  Steele  in,  14. 

Essais  of  Montaigne,   1-4, 
5,  no,  112,  151. 

Essays 

Origin,  etc.,  i ;  nature,  3- 
4;  meaning  of  term,  6; 
influence  of  Steele  and 
Addison  upon,  13,  21, 
24;  influence  of  Dr. 
Johnson  upon,  27-30 ;  in- 
fluence of  Goldsmith 
upon,  34 ;  "objective"  es- 
says, 110-112;  kinds  of, 
see  Appendix  I. 

Essays  of  Elia,  38,  43,  95, 
102. 

Examiner,  The,  75. 

Fable  for  Critics,  A,   71, 

142. 
Fichte,  107  (note). 
Fielding,  Henry,  159;  also 

Appendix  II. 
F  1  o  r  i  o  '  s  translation  of 

Montaigne,  i,  4  (note). 
Franklin,     Benjamin,     48, 

49;  also  Appendix  II. 
Frase/s     Magazine,     103, 

169. 


Froude,  106. 

Gay  (quoted),  22. 
Goethe,  102,  137,  175,  185. 
Goldsmith,  Oliver,  30-34; 

autobiographical  p  a  s  - 
sages  in  works,  31-32; 
boyhood  and  education, 
31-32;  Continental  ex- 
periences, 32 ;  member 
of  Dr.  Johnson's  Club, 
32 ;  epitaph  in  Westmin- 
ster Abbey,  33 ;  as  an  es- 
sayist, 33-34;  Life  by  Ir- 
ving, 54;  ignorance  of 
America,  58 ;  and  Thack- 
eray, 159. 

Gosse,  Mr.  Edmund,  191 ; 
also  Appendix  III. 

Grifiiths,  publisher  of 
Monthly  Review,  32. 

Harrison,  Mr.  Frederic, 
118;  also  Appendix  III. 

Hawthorne,  Nathaniel,  82, 
83,  84,  189 ;  also  Appen- 
dix II. 

Hazlitt,  William,  45-57 ; 
contrasted  with  Lamb, 
46;  Carlyle's  opinion  of, 
also  Stevenson's  and 
Lamb's,  46;  his  times  as 
explaining  his  character, 
47-49;  early  life  of,  49; 
reading,  50;  and  Cole- 
ridge, 50;  as  a  painter, 
51 ;  and  Lamb,  51 ;  early 
literary  efforts,  52;  the 
Round  Table,  52;  quar- 
rel with  Gifford,  53;  his 


INDEX 


213 


pleasure  in  hating,  54; 
breach  with  Hunt,  54; 
barbed  thrusts  in  his 
writings,  54-55 ;  other 
quarrels,  55;  last  words, 
56 ;  attitude  toward 
America,  54,  58;  and 
Hunt,  76;  his  Ignorance 
of  the  Learned,  139-140; 
as  a  "Good  night"  au- 
thor, 152. 

Henley,  W.  E.,  190. 

Henry,  Patrick,  58. 

Hoffman,     Miss     Matilda, 

65,  71. 

Holmes,    Oliver    Wendell, 
152;  also  Appendix  II. 

Honeycomb,  Will,  20,  30. 

Howell's  Letters,  151. 

Hunt,  Leigh,  71-84; 
and  the  Round  Table, 
52;  breach  with  Hazlitt, 
54;  elements  in  charac- 
ter, 72-75;  father,  73; 
mother,  73-74;  religious 
views,  75 ;  early  life  and 
writings,  75  ;  The  Exam- 
iner, y6\  Prince  Regent 
affair,  76;  Keats  and 
Shelley,  76,  84;  poems, 
etc.,  76;  Autobiography, 
yy-y  Italian  venture,  yy, 
breach  with  Dickens,  78 ; 
character,  78-84;  sensi- 
tiveness, 79 ;  optimism, 
80-81 ;  Carlyle  and,  84 ; 
influence,  84;  and  Rus- 
kin,  164. 

Hyde,    President    William 
DeWitt,  140. 


Idler,  The,  papers  by  Dr. 
Johnson,  26. 

Irving,  Washington,  57-71 ; 
his  Life  of  Goldsmith,  54 ; 
anecdote  concerning,  57; 
name,  57;  prevailing  ig- 
norance concerning 
America,  58;  the  Sketch 
Book  well  known,  57, 
59;  birth  and  boyhood, 
59-60 ;  education  and 
early  writing,  61-62 ; 
visit  to  Europe,  61 ;  law 
student,  etc.,  62;  Salma- 
gundi, 62;  Knickerbock- 
er History,  63-65;  Miss 
Hoffman,  65 ;  business 
trip  to  England,  66;  Eu- 
ropean sojourn,  66-68; 
writing  and  publication 
of  The  Sketch  Book, 
67 ;  other  writings,  68ff. ; 
return  to  America,  68; 
Sunnyside,  69;  honored 
by  Dickens,  69;  minister 
to  Spain,  69;  death,  69; 
permanency  of  writings, 
70;  and  Carlyle,  95. 

James,  Henry,  58. 

James,  William,  150. 

Jane  Eyre,  153. 

Jeffrey,  Lord  Francis,  56, 
III;   also  Appendix   II. 

Joan  of  Arc,  86. 

Johnson,  Dr.  Samuel,  25- 

30; 

testimony  of  as  to  mflu- 

ence  of   The  Spectator, 

24;  treated  here  only  as 


214 


INDEX 


an  essayist,  25 ;  birth 
and  characteristics,  26 ; 
goes  to  London,  26;  his 
Dictionary,  26 ;  The 
Rambler,  etc.,  26 ;  Rasse- 
las,  27;  the  Club,  2y ; 
Life  by  Boswell,  27;  in- 
fluence upon  essay,  27- 
30;  in  fiction,  31. 
Journal  des  savants,  iii 
(note). 

Keats,  John,  y6,  84. 

Keble,  John,  128. 

Kinds    of    essays,    I28ff. ; 

also  Appendix  I. 
Kingsbridge,    New    York, 

64. 

Kingsley,  Charles,  132. 
Knickerbocker,      Diedrich, 

and  his  History  of  New 

York,  64-65,  70. 

Lamb,      Charles,      35*45 ; 

and  Mary  Lamb,  35-36; 
discouragements,  36-38 ; 
The  Old  Familiar  Faces, 
37 ;  cheerfulness  and 
heroism,  38;  newspaper 
writing,  38-39;  punning, 
40;  anecdotes,  41,  1551; 
opinion  of  Carlyle  con- 
cerning, 42 ;  ditto  of 
Professor  Winchester, 
42 ;  variety  of  his  essays, 
43 ;  Carlyle's  description 
of,  44;  "Poor  Charles 
Lamb!"  44;  portrait  by 
Hazlitt,  51 ;  friend  of 
Hazlitt,  51 ;  and  Irving, 


66,  70;   favorite  among 
Hunt's  essays,  81 ;  Car- 
lyle's   first    opinion    of, 
102. 
Lamb,   Mary,   35,   36,   41, 

44,  155- 

Lloyd,  friend  of  Charles 
Lamb,  37. 

London  Magazine,  47,  102. 

Lowell,  his  characteriza- 
tion of  Irving,  71 ;  of 
Emerson,  142 ;  and 
Thackeray,  159;  also 
Appendix  II. 

Macaulay,   Thomas   Bab- 
ington,  1 1 2- 1 22; 

his  brilliant  career,  113; 
parentage  and  education, 
114;  precocity,  114; 
memory,  114;  first  pub- 
lic speech,  115;  Milton 
essay  published,  115; 
other  speeches,  115;  the 
Lays,  115;  History  of 
England,  115;  civil  and 
political  activity,  116; 
moral  integrity,  116; 
method  of  composition, 
116;  sudden  death,  117; 
why  not  among  the 
greatest,  1 17-122;  too 
great  regard  for  effec- 
tiveness, 117;  and  Car- 
lyle, on  History,  120; 
Emerson's  characteriza- 
tion of,  121 ;  contrast  to 
Newman,  125;  and  Rus- 
kin,  164. 
Man  in  Black,  The,  30,  31. 


INDEX 


215 


Minor  Essayists,   1 1 ;  also 

Appendix  II. 
Mitchell,  Dr.  Samuel,  and 

his     Picture     of     New 

York,  63. 
Montaigne,     Michel     de, 

originator  of  modern  es- 
say, I ;  purpose  in  writ- 
ing, 2;  character,  2; 
motto,  2;  Emerson's  es- 
timate of,  2-3;  and  Ba- 
con, 5,  6;  and  Cowley, 
10;  and  Addison  and 
Steele,  21 ;  and  Carlyle, 
no ;  and  Thackeray,  151. 

Newman,  John  Henry, 
Cardinal,  122-134; 
wrote  objective  essays, 
112;  similarity  to  Car- 
lyle, 124;  attitude  to- 
ward matters  of  religion, 
124;  and  Carlyle,  125; 
endurance  of  criticism, 
126;  early  notions  of  re- 
ligion, 127;  progress  at 
Oxford,  127;  Continen- 
tal tour,  128;  Lead, 
Kindly  Light,  128;  the 
Oxford  Movement,  129; 
Tracts  for  the  Times, 
I2g;  results  of  the  move- 
ment, 129;  Tract  90, 
130 ;  enters  Catholic 
communion,  130;  gener- 
al contempt  for,  130; 
friends — effect  of  Achil- 
li  suit,  130;  Rector  of 
University     of     Dublin, 


131;  lectures.  Idea  of  a 
University,  131 ;  quarrel 
with  Kingsley,  132  ; 
Apologia,  132;  attacked 
by  Gladstone,  132;  Let- 
ter to  the  Duke  of  Nor- 
folk, 133;  honors,  133; 
death,  133;  effect  of 
teachings,  133-134. 

Nineteenth  Century  essay- 
ists of  minor  importance, 
see  Appendix  II. 

Objective  (essays),  86, 
1 10- 1 12;  also  Appendix 
I. 

Oldstyle,  Jonathan,  61. 

On  Murder,  etc.,  86. 

Origin  of  modern  essays,  i. 

Oxford  Movement,  129. 

Pamela,  30. 

Pensions,  old  age,  163,  170. 

Periodical  essays,  influence 
of  Defoe  upon,  17 ;  ditto 
of  Steele  and  Addison, 
21 ;  ditto  of  Dr.  Johnson, 
27-30;  ditto  of  Oliver 
Goldsmith,  34. 

Perry,  Professor  Bliss, 
105;  also  Appendix  III. 

Pickwick  Papers,  158. 

Plain  Speaker,  The,  56. 

Pre-Raphaelites,  the,  163, 
168. 

Prescott,  William  H.,  69. 

Prince  Regent  affair,  y6, 
81. 

Punch,  iS2,  159. 

Rambler^  The,  26,  2^,  29. 


2l6 


INDEX 


Rasselas,  2y. 

Reform  Bill  of  1832,  128. 

Review,  Defoe's,  17. 

Richter,  Jean  Paul  Fried- 
rich,  102,  107  (note). 

Round  Table,  52,  56,  y6. 

Royce,  Professor  Josiah, 
150. 

Ruskin,  John,  161-172; 
influenced  by  Carlyle, 
97 ;  held  in  low  esteem 
by  many,  162;  influence, 
163;  characterization, 
164;  art  studies,  165; 
and  Dickens,  165  ;  inheri- 
tance and  childhood,  106 ; 
education,  166;  Modern 
Painters,  167 ;  impas- 
sioned prose,  167;  other 
works,  168;  as  an  art 
collector,  168;  as  an  ar- 
tist, 168;  marriage,  168; 
social  service  activity, 
170;  further  writings, 
170;  principles,  170;  ex- 
periments, 170;  Slade 
Professor  of  Fine  Arts, 
170;  Whistler  episode, 
170;  resignation,  171; 
Brantwood,  171 ;  death 
and  burial,  171 ;  com- 
pared with  Carlyle  and 
Emerson,  171-172;  and 
Arnold,  174,  185. 

Salmagundi,  62. 

Scandalous  Club,  in  De- 
foe's Review,  17,  21. 

Scott,  Sir  Walter,  56,  65, 
66,  114,  115,  155,  187. 


Seneca,  his  Epistles,  i,  5 
(note). 

Seventeenth  Century  essay- 
ists of  minor  importance, 
1 1 ;  also  Appendix  II. 

Shakespeare,  i,  96. 

Shelley,  Percy  Bysshe,  '^6, 

77,  84. 
She  Stoops  to  Conquer,  29, 

.32. 
Sir  Roger,  20,  30. 
Sketch  Book,  The,  57,  59, 

67. 
Skimpole,  Harold,  78. 
Smith,   Sydney,    1 1 1 ;   also 

Appendix  II. 
Spectator,  The,   13,   19-24, 

26,  52. 
Steele,  Sir  Richard,  13-15, 
16-25; 

education,     13 ;    p  1  a  y  - 

wright  and  gazetteer,  14 ; 

issues    The    Tatler,    14; 

issues  The  Spectator,  14 ; 

breach     with     Addison, 

16;  supplemented  by  Dr. 

Johnson,   29 ;   in   fiction, 

14,  36. 
Stevenson,  Robert  Louis, 
185-194; 

contrasted  with  New- 
man, 124;  characteriza- 
tion, 186;  Edinburgh  as 
a  cradle  of  romance, 
187;  other  romantic  in- 
fluences, 188;  as  an  en- 
gineer, 189 ;  as  a  literary 
apprentice,  and  lawyer, 
189;  An  Inland  Voyage, 
190;    Travels    With    a 


INDEX 


217 


Donkey,  190;  other  es- 
say-writings, etc.,  190; 
love  affair,  190;  illness, 
191 ;  literary  success, 
192 ;  Vailima,  Tusitala, 
192;  fortitude  and  in- 
dustry, 193;  death,  193; 
burial  and  epitaph,  194. 

Subjective  (essays),  5, 
112;  also  Appendix  I. 

Sunnyside,  69. 

Swift,  Jonathan,  17,  18, 
99,  184;  also  Appendix 
11. 

Table  Talk,  56. 
Tales  of  a  Traveller,  68. 
Tales  of  the  Alhambra,  68. 
Tatler,  The,  16-25. 
Tatler,  The,  Leigh  Hunt's, 

77- 
Templar,  The,  20. 
Thackeray,    William 
Makepeace,    1 5 1  - 1 6 1 ; 

his  picture  of  Steele,  14; 
as  a  "Good  night"  au- 
thor, 151 ;  no  cynic,  152- 
153;  as  a  "social  regen- 
erator," 153 ;  serious  pur- 
pose of,  154;  examples 
of  method,  156;  early 
life,  158;  early  literary 
efforts,  159;  success  of 
Vanity  Fair,  159;  other 
novels,   159;  lectures  in 


America,  159;  breach 
with  Dickens,  160;  edi- 
tor of  Cornhill  Maga- 
zine, 160;  death,  160; 
and  Ruskin,  169. 

Tibbs,  Beau,  30. 

Tom  Jones,  30. 

Tracts  for  the  Times,  129. 

Tract  po,  130. 

Traveller,  The,  32. 

Trivia,  22  (note),  29. 

Turner,  J.  M.  W.,  163,  167, 
168. 

Unto  This  Last,  165,  169. 

Vanity  Fair,  154,  156,  159. 
Vicar  of  Wakekeld,  32. 
Vocational  training,  163. 
Von   Rankers   History    of 
the  Popes,  118. 

War,  163. 

Washington,  Booker  T.,  58. 

Washington,    George,    57, 

58. 
Whistler,  James  MacNeil, 

170. 
Winchester,    Professor    C. 

T.,  42  (and  note),  84. 
Wolferfs  Roost,  69. 
Wordsworth,  William,  50, 

51,   147. 
Works    of    the    Learned, 
III. 


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